


The Logistics of Good Living

by Karmic Acumen (Karmic_Acumen)



Series: The Logistics of Good Living [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Family, Fantasy, Magic, Mystery, Occult, Self-Insert, Supernatural Elements, The North (ASOIAF)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 158,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26007841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karmic_Acumen/pseuds/Karmic%20Acumen
Summary: He sometimes had the occasional, very vivid dream wherein he traveled to strange worlds and had bizarre adventures. This may well be one of them, if only for the irony. Given the possibility that every lucid dream is actually long-range astral projection or parallel incarnation, he had no qualms about treating this world as real. Of course, he could also be wrong. Wouldn't that be something? If nothing else, though, his new family won't take quite the same amount of work to salvage as his previous one. [Brandon Stark SI]
Relationships: Brandon Stark & Rickard Stark, Lyarra Stark/Rickard Stark
Series: The Logistics of Good Living [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1969693
Comments: 200
Kudos: 505
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts, the peasant's guide to fine reading





	1. Sorry Drama, Your Dragon Is in another Dungeon

“-. 272 AC .-“

Once upon first winter day, my father sat down to watch us play.

Even my youngest brother. For all that he was just five years old and not _currently_ my main project, he’d shown remarkable alacrity in pushing to the point where he didn’t need mother to play for him anymore. Well, mostly. Not that it stopped her from sitting him on her lap like she’d done pretty much every prior session. But that just meant I didn’t have to spend twice my supply of “Heir’s in with The Man” to ensure the attendance of all _relevant parties_ on this most _auspicious_ occasion, so hey, bonus!

“Alright. Everyone remember where we left off?”

“Harrenhall at the beginning of the feast proper,” my brother dutifully reported. “The Dragon Prince had just performed his most sad and beautiful song.”

“It made Lyanna cry!” Benjen crowed.

“Watch it, twerp! It’s not my fault my will saves are so low.” True. I’d ‘helped’ with character creation, seeing as there was nothing else to do when everyone were first-time players. “Besides, those are the pure, innocent tears of love unrequieted that you’re laughing at!” She sure was eating up every last one of my big words, wasn’t she? It was enough to think she wasn’t utterly horrified by the thought of becoming a lady in real life. “You’re lucky mom’s here.”

“Indeed,” Eddard said dryly, positioning the figurine I’d carved for him on the grid with pinpoint precision. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if you’d _actually_ done what you did afterwards for real.”

“Says the boy who embarrassed himself in his first meeting with his maiden fair,” Lyanna shot back before father could more than blink. “Oh look at me! Big, strong, secretive warrior that’s too shy to ask for a dance!” The way she shoved forth her own wooden avatar was very characteristic at this point. I could easily see her growing into the girl that would pour wine over her little brother’s head as soon as she was old enough to drink real spirits. “If Brandon hadn’t taken pity on you and asked her on your behalf, you’d probably be drinking yourself stupid along with the extras right now.”

“Just so,” Eddard said unrepentantly. “For the sake of the Pack I am doomed to belabour under severe penalties when dealing with other people, but such is my burden.”

I made sure not to react openly. Since I was basically their unmerciful god no matter how faithfully I played my part in the story, Eddard had fallen into the position of party leader pretty much by default. A good seed planted in the fertile grounds of his mind. And so much earlier than providence might otherwise ordain! That he so quickly grasped the trait/flaw system definitely didn’t hurt my designs for this particular scenario either.

All perfectly in line with my master plan to pre-empt his selective blindness in real life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. “Sing upon the turning of the years, o minstrel, of the Dissonance of the Spheres. When so great and terrible were the plans of rats and men, that many a hero did they yield a prey to dogs and vultures. Sing, o bard, as kin and strife come home to roost! Of the councils of the craven, the godless, the deluded that brought countless ills upon the scions of mankind.”

My siblings immediately quieted and got in character despite themselves.

“Lo! The Dragon Prince sings and plays his harp in a most sad and beautiful song that rouses the spirits of men and makes women weep, young and old alike. Thus does the feast begin on a most high note of merry. Even the all but unnoticed pall weighing upon the proceedings since the King’s arrival seems to dissipate for a time. And so our tale resumes. Roll for initiative.”

My three siblings dutifully took turns rolling the twenty-sided dice that had taken more time and effort to carve properly than all our character avatars combined. Thank heavens for professional sculptors because no amount of brotherly love was worth _that_ amount of stress.

“Lyanna gets to go first, then Benjen and Eddard. Now roll perception… Alright. Turns out Lyanna’s too emotionally compromised to care about anything besides her handkerchief right now, but you two rolled well enough. You see a recruiting officer of the Night's Watch trying to convince knights to join the Watch. Elsewhere, Lord Bobby B is already in a drinking contest with the Knight of Skulls and Kisses. Roll will… and you’re both utterly captivated by the spectacle.”

_Skulls and Kisses?_ Father mouthed silently at mother, confounded by what must seem like the odd inventions of childish imagination. It drew an amused smile from her, but she didn’t interrupt.

Oh the irony. “Now let’s see, Eddard has the Shared Background and Long-Suffering traits with Bobby B, so he auto-passes will and gets a second roll to perception… Right, you can already tell that your foster-brother will win the contest so you lose interest and look around again. You end up laying eyes on Lady Arasha Dayne -”

“Thy Dornish maid with laughing purple eyes!” Lyanna mock-swooned.

“- who has been dancing in turns with various partners. Right now, she’s just finishing a dance with a member of the Kingsguard that has the same hair and tanned skin-“

“Oh, oh! I know this one!” Benjen pipes in. “Her brother right? Rathur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning!”

“That’s right. Well done, Benjen.”

The boy preened.

“I choose to approach her for a second dance,” Eddard said.

“Roll for initiative.”

He did. It didn’t go any better than the first time. The ‘Quiet Wolf’ mixed flaw/trait was no joke with outsiders. “Sorry little brother, no luck. You don’t talk yourself into it fast enough. The Red Snake gets to her first.” Must keep face straight. Especially when Rickard Stark looks at you the way he just did.

“I try again.” Eddard did.

“Ouch.” Critical failure. “But the ‘Quiet Wolf’ means you get a roll to see if someone in your in-group spots your impending public humiliation in time to… yep, you’re in luck.”

Eddard made a face at the result and Lyanna promptly burst into laughter. “Big brother to the rescue again!” I wasn’t sure if that was in character or not.

For my part, I had to quickly banish any fixed point in time notions when I saw chance conspire to make things fall into place so distressingly neatly. Staging the dance encounter one session early was supposed to protect me from stuff like this! “I maneuver myself into a position to take the Dornish Lady out for a round myself. It takes a while, during which she dances with a man wearing a double-griffin heraldry alternating red and white.”

“House… Connington?” Eddard did his best to recall from the independent reading on House Heraldry he’d been doing for the past few weeks as the game progressed. At my nod, he seemed to regain all the confidence he’d lost from all his failed rolls. “Griff Connington then. Good. No rivalry flags, right?”

“That’s right.”

Both right and good. Allowing them to substitute personal knowledge for rolls was also part of my master plan to cultivate their intellect early. To be honest, it was working even better than I’d hoped.

Of course, after Eddard finally ‘got back’ at Lyanna by finally getting his dance – her teasing being the only reason his pre-teen self even pursued a romance in the game at all, funnily enough – it became clear that the one who’d blossomed the most was actually Benjen.

“Can I finally take my turn again now?” Lyanna complained after Eddard finally got his dance. “Just because I liked his singing doesn’t mean I’m turning into a vapid _lady_!” She did her best to act like the thought repulsed her. She even had me convinced, but I decided to defer judgement until next decade. “Finally! I look around to spot anything actually interesting. I roll for perception.”

“Rolling for quest character as well… Both you and the crannogman spot the three bullying squires. One serves a knight wearing the livery of a pitchfork, one a porcupine and one two towers.”

“Oh, let me, let me!” Benjen almost fell off mother’s lap reaching for the large sheet of paper I’d spent two weeks drawing on and off. Smiling indulgently, Eddard and Lyanna leaned close to examine the paper as well. “The pitchfork is… this! House… H-a-i-g-h?”

“House Haigh, yes,” Eddard said, not noticing Father’s astonishment at learning his youngest could already read.

“Right! And then there’s House… Blunt?”

“Blount,” Lyanna corrected with all the loftiness undeserved by a girl who’d been behind even him until mid-year. Which made Father look at _her_ sharply as well.

“Right, that. So the last boy is with House Frey!”

“That’s right,” I said. “Well done, Benjen.”

“Yes,” Father interjected suddenly, almost breaking the atmosphere if not for how low and neutral his voice was. “Well done indeed, son.”

Benjen outright glowed at the praise.

I pretended to be unaffected by the intense paternal gaze that locked on me after that and never wholly turned away until well after the game session ended.

Which took a while.

Not the sort of parental regard I was looking for, but then again, I barely ever got any sort of regard from him at all. Even on those rare occasions, I almost always had to be looking away or otherwise seem like I didn’t realise he was watching me.

Lyanna pointed the squires out to the three of us brothers. As per the script, I offered to find the crannogman a horse and armor in order to avenge himself. Also per the script, Lord Landhowl Reed failed to reply, torn with indecision. His pride demanded vengeance, but he was afraid of losing and making a fool of himself, bringing shame to his people in the process. He was no knight and was not used to horses and lances. Before going to sleep in Eddard’s tent, who’d offered him hospitality without me having to even hint at it, he prayed to the old gods.

And what unfolded was about as terribly perfect as four people could possibly get when only one of us had read the script. The tournament happened. The porcupine, pitchfork, and the two towers knights all jousted. All three each won a place among the champions with minimal dice fixing by me to make it happen.

Which was when Lyanna, in an act that I had simultaneously prepared for, hoped to see _and_ dreaded, appeared on the lists as a mystery knight. Though maybe I shouldn’t be surprised after the effort I put into acting out Landhowl’s prayers with full voice over and in-character pathos on top of that. Of _course_ a girl would decide she was Gods’ gift to man.

Even if she had to rely on Benjen’s skulking to actually get enlisted.

She came out perfectly disguised too, in a frankly exceptional bit of in-character roleplay by her _and_ Benjen, who’d played the game growing into a rogue specced for support with top ranks in the disguise skill. It was like all my most worrisome second-hand knowledge come full to life. Short of stature, ‘his’ equipment was made up of mismatched armor bits and pieces that appeared ill-fitting on him, and ‘his’ shield was blazoned with the image of a white weirwood with a laughing red face.

Lyanna even pulled out an all-new figurine for herself. I recognised the craftsmanship of the same person I patronised. Exquisitely carved. Even painted. But that wasn’t all of it, the figurine was also dressed in actual clothing. Hand-stitched in what was obviously her own hand. Only much less uneven than it used to be. Was _this_ why she hadn’t been living up to the Lyanna Underfoot title I gave her, these past two weeks?

The mystery knight challenged and defeated all the rival knights, winning custody over their horses and armor. None of them were particularly popular, so I had the smallfolk cheer for her all the while. It made Lyanna’s day. Benjen’s too. Which was more than fair. The business with the knights didn’t really matter now that the mysterious "Knight of the Laughing Tree" had materialised. When the defeated three sought to ransom back their former property, though, Lyanna gave me all the extra reason I never wanted to wonder at her older self’s mental development (or lack thereof) in the scenario that may or may not eventually happen: somehow she still stayed on script the whole time. She even used a real helmet and a tight choker to make her voice sound “booming”.

I didn’t hint at what I was thinking. Instead, I went and had the trio sharply chastise their squires as per rote.

“And so, my mission done, I spur my horse around and leave the grounds with head held high!” Lyanna proclaimed, the satisfaction of a job well done oozing out of her.

“Roll stealth.”

Little sister floundered. “Wait what?”

“The mystery knight has attracted unwanted attention.” I made a show of rolling various four-, six- and twenty-sided dice. “Bobby B and the Knight of Skulls and Kisses are determined to unmask him, while the Mad King is certain that the man is his enemy. The king is convinced that the tree on the mystery knight's shield was laughing at him. He has decided…” A twenty-side dice landed on 1. Just to mock me, I was sure. “King Reays has decided that the mystery knight is Ser James Lannister. That he has returned to the tourney, defying his order to protect Queen Ellarha and Prince Viserys in King's Landing. Reays is now telling his beliefs to every man who would listen, and has furiously commanded his own knights to defeat the Knight of the Laughing Tree when the jousts resume the next morning, to unmask and expose him.”

There was a long silence.

“… You SUCK!”

“Daughter!” Lyarra Stark balked while covering Benjen’s ears, scandalized. “I _will_ ground you again, see if I won’t.”

“Like the first time!” Benjen piped cheerfully, referring to the sad conclusion of our first game session. And the second.

And the fifth.

Lyanna proceeded to spill out a whole litany of complaints while the rest of us waited for mother to browbeat common sense back into her. It was something that took less and less time every session, so I was optimistic she might even gain actual self-awareness one of these days.

Say around this time next year.

“Well,” Eddard said flatly. “That escalated quickly.”

So he wasn’t just sticking to my original, poorly-carved figurine instead of the professional works I later commissioned for everyone. Now Eddard was quoting my words back at me! I manfully contained my reaction, even as I wished it wasn’t getting so easy to do. As much as I was a sucker for Big Brother Worship, sometimes I wished someone else could be privy to my inside jokes.

Especially the terrible ones.

“Fine then!” Lyanna finally huffed, but didn’t run off. “I roll for stealth.”

“Well now, that’s not a bad result. You should get away unless… the Dragon Prince rolls a natural critical on his search roll and finds you just as you hang your shield up in a tree.”

“… I knew it!” Lyanna jumped to her feet on the chair and pointed a finger at me dramatically. “This is just an elaborate scheme to turn me into a lady after all, you _snark_!”

Ah, the self-absorption of an egocentric girl that hadn’t yet realised she wasn’t the main character in anyone else’s life.

It would have been a lot more convincing if she _didn’t_ then proceed to deliberately act out the “secret romance with my sweet prince” scenario out of spite. She even put enough roleplay into it to cut the number of needed dice rolls by half. She exploited Benjen’s childish sycophancy for all it was worth too. Somewhere amidst it all, she even nailed the full set of “this is why I won’t marry Bobby B no matter what” reasons I’d ever read of.

Lyanna was understandably vindicated when the Dragon prince crowned her the Queen of Love and Beauty. She genuinely thought it was an admission of defeat from me to her. That she’d bitten this hook with the intent to fight _against_ the notion that she could be a proper lady seemed to have slipped her mind at some point in the quest. Maybe I might have left it at that if she hadn’t gone that last mile to throw it in my face. It _was_ getting fairly late.

But then she went and eloped with her Prince Charming.

“And they lived happily ever after,” Lyanna gloated at the conclusion of her make-believe Best End.

So, being the fair and unmerciful god that I was, I gathered up all the hooks they _didn’t_ bite and laid out the True End.

“-. .-“

“-t my fault he never stops throwing things at us, there’s never enough time to do everything and he never tells us who’s important or why they’re important, and then he punishes us for setting us up to fail in the first place! There’s never a way to figure out what all we’re supposed to do. If I fail my knowledge skill, how else am I supposed to figure out what’s going to happen? There’s _no_ way to figure it out, that’s how! All we can do is act at random until one of us stumbles on something important, right? I mean, it’s one thing if it is a KNIGHT with a LANCE riding a BARDED HORSE wrapped in LIVERY in a TOURNEY range. You can guess pretty easy that you’re going to make him eat lance or bust! But the love story was nothing like that at all! He ruined it! He ruined a perfect _love story_! And it’s not just a one-off, he always does this, he never lets us _win!_ ”

Did she already forget _who_ it was that actually got burned alive and strangled to death for the sake of her maiden romance?

Also, they never actually went and _did_ anything. They just waited for the story to happen to them and then reacted here and there. And that was just one of a long list of things I could unpack from Lyanna’s latest blubbering attempt to turn her mother into a shield against the consequences of her actions. And the consequences of her _lack_ of actions, but there was even less use in trying to point that out when Eddard – the only one who seemed to have wizened up to that crazy idea known as _being proactive_ – had long since absconded with Benjen in tow.

It really was a shame.

Also, rather worrying. Their lack of initiative as _players_ – as opposed to the stats of their characters – was the one, true, major problem of them all. They didn’t set out to gather information, they didn’t go off exploring unless I tossed a random encounter at them, they didn’t follow up on even half the quest hooks I dangled in front of them. Eddard very maturely had assumed responsibility for that failure before leaving, but that only made Lyanna wail louder about everyone but Benjen constantly conspiring to upstage her.

For someone who didn’t want to become a lady, she sure was acting like a spoiled princess.

Oh well. Odds were that a serious talk between us right now would just segue into what would have happened if the She-Wolf _hadn’t_ agreed to elope with Prince Charming.

Wouldn’t that be fun?

And I hadn’t even thrown the three-headed prophecy or the Prince that Was Promised at them yet.

Segmented revelation. Slow and steady. Maybe over a year or three before I nuked that particular comet from orbit. It was the only way to be sure.

Unfortunately, with how things were going, I might not even have two before I never see them again for the next and possibly last seven years of my life.

“Alright,” Lyarra Stark said, having finished wiping off Lyanna’s latest batch of blotchy tears. “I can see we have a lot to talk about, daughter mine. Let’s go to your room so we can talk in private.”

Translation: let me take you to someplace secluded because you’re too proud to admit fault in the company of anyone who dares hold you to any sort of standard you didn’t choose for yourself.

Because it’s not like a six-year-old girl might possess less than perfect judgment or anything.

Finally, Father and I were the only two in the room.

I turned in my seat just enough to face him without actually facing him. Because this, too, seemed too fragile a scene for anything other than slow and steady.

“She’s actually been taking less and less time to get over herself every time this happens,” I threw out randomly, because why not? I liked efficiency and I appreciated it even more when others were around to appreciate it as well. “Eddard, meanwhile, has basically memorised the houses and words and heraldries, which is a lot sooner than I did it. And Benjen’s basically set a record for the fastest any Starks learned how to read! Why, another session or three and-”

“Boy,” father interrupted me. “You wanted me to sit in on your childish games, and I have.” Rickard Stark spoke from where he sat in his chair at the other end of the room. Strongly. Sternly. Without facing me any further than I did him. “But after the lengths you went to _buy_ these scant few hours, all I see is a reason to seriously wonder if you’ve any ability to weigh a deal at all. I can’t even begin to fathom what you thought this would accomplish.”

“You could hug me every once in a while, for starters.”

Dumbfounded was an unprecedented look on my father face. It was usually so long and stern and filled with quiet dignity. It was a damn shame I had to refrain from looking at it, seeing as he could barely stomach the sight of me even on our best days.

“I tried to figure it out, you know, this _thing_ between us, but I’m officially giving up on trying.” The air seemed to become unnaturally still even though Father barely twitched. “At first I wondered if it was something I did, but if that’s the case it happened too long ago for me to remember. I wondered if the problem was _all_ of me, since you’ve been like this as long as I _can_ remember. Maybe you thought I’d been switched at birth or something? Eddard, Lyanna, Benjen, there’s nothing between you and them that’s _anything_ like this thing between us. But since I’m a dutiful and respectful son that’s reasonably mediocre in most things and even gifted in a couple of niches, I have to conclude it’s not me.” _It’s you_ could have been yelled from the roof of the Broken Tower. And yet Father didn’t interrupt me. “So, if it’s not about me, I asked myself, what could it be? Maybe Maester Walys. He’s shady. Entitled too, seeing as he acts like he actually _owns_ those books and that tower. Also, always on my case for reading at my pace instead of his. Among other things I have issues with, but enough about me.”

Rickard Stark shifted and did that half-glare that usually preceded him coming down on Lyanna in full Lordly wrath after she disrespected the Maester, but somehow he refrained once again.

“The weirdest thing is that you’re not even a bad father.” Lord Stark actually gave a small start. Too bad I couldn’t interpret it any better than his usual contempt, fake or not. “You didn’t abandon me, you’ve never struck me, you haven’t neglected my basic needs or education even though you did pawn me off to Walys and whoever else can keep me out of your sight the longest.”

“… Is that what it seems like to you?”

It was about as soft as his voice ever got.

It took all my self-control not to react the way I _really_ wanted to the fact that he finally replied to me. “Yes.”

Truth be told, Rickard Stark was about as good a father as an aloof parent could be, at least to anyone who wasn’t me. And as someone who’s all too experienced in matters of abusive parenting, I’m probably the highest authority on the subject that’s been born in the Stark family for several generations.

With me, though, he was always the same way. It was always the same thing. This tense _nothing_. For everything I did that was good _and_ bad.

I rose from my chair and started pacing the room. Even now, he was retreating behind his stern silence all over again. It was a real shame that it all was the absolute _opposite_ of what I wanted.

“It should not have taken the establishment of an _entire industry_ to _buy_ leverage with my own father, especially this little of it, and _especially_ when smallfolk get in one audience more of your time than I get in a week. For _free_.” A slap in the face, but having to go so far just for this was a slap in mine. Besides, strong statements had their place as well. “Granted, it’s bizarre in the extreme that nobody in Westeros thought to figure out paper for this whole century and a half we’ve been importing it from across the Narrow Sea. You’d have thought someone at the Citadel might have known the secret, especially with how simple it turned out to be. Now granted, it worked out for me. But having to pay _this_ is kind of price every time I want to have the merest _conversation_ with my own father is not a sustainable enterprise.”

I waited.

“Especially since this _thing_ between us has only been growing worse.”

I waited again.

“More so when there’s just one way it can proceed from here, at least if there’s to be anything resembling release. For _one_ of us, that is.”

And even here, at the cusp of the obvious end of this strange conversation I _shouldn’t_ have had to force as a ten-year-old, my Father still wouldn’t tell me _anything_.

That was fine. I had patience too.

And unlike him, I _did_ have the wish and the will and the _ability_ to completely destroy our relationship.

Stopping in place abruptly, I turned to face my father, looked him in the eye and pretended not to catch his too clear flash of guilt. “I will not be fostered away just to bandage someone else’s emotional ineptitude, Father. Not even yours!” I swept a hand to silence him then, trading his fake scorn for much more satisfyingly _real_ outrage at this glimpse into the audacity I’d been bottling up my whole life. “Don’t worry though. By Winter’s end, I’ll be such a _valuable resource_ that even you won’t stomach the thought of shunning or pawning me off ever again.”


	2. My Children’s Father Is Simply the Worst (I)

“-. 245 - 265 AC .-“

Rickard Stark was born in midsummer, grew up an only child, married when he was six and ten, and thought the Gods were good.

Then his mother and father both died of consumption within a year of his wedding, along with the old Maester and half the servant staff. The things he had to do to stem the spread were only less bitter than the vitriol he threw at the Citadel for the incompetence they’d foisted on his line. It was a terrible trial to overcome. A normal man it might have slain. Another lord it may have broken. For a sudden accessor to Lord Paramount barely into adulthood, it was as gruesome a test of lordship as they came and carved his face in stone.

A year later he had new servants, a new Maester and a firstborn son. He’d thought it a sign. A new start. Perhaps with a little more life than death this time, to fill the damned silence that now weighed down Winterfell’s halls. He should have known not to trust so soon a hope. Not after such a blatant lesson in how the brightest of his days would bring on darkest night. But Brandon was as healthy, strong and active as a baby could be, sometimes fussy, sometimes quiet, rarely crying, and possessed of an astonishing appetite. Especially after that odd day when he up and refused to be nursed anymore and never accepted a teat again.

Everyone from the wetnurse to his wife and the new Maester had been confounded, and Rickard was no better himself. But the boy was fine and showed an even greater appetite after, increasingly so after his teething came and went. Without any cries or tears. At all.

He should have listened to Walys when he wondered at Brandon not putting on the plumpness he should have from all the cow and goat milk in his diet, never mind everything else. But he’d thought the Gods had tested him enough, and the failure of Walys’ predecessor was still too fresh a wound for him to have an open mind. Doubly so when the implications were so dreadful.

So he blinded and deafened himself to whatever might have been a sign. Watched and listened instead as Brandon took his first steps at nine moons. Rejoiced when he started talking the day after. His first word was _papa_. His first word! Of course, then his boy immediately asked for more food. Rickard had laughed himself sick all day but really, what else was a father to do but watch and laugh and delight in it all? So that’s what he did. He watched and delighted in his firstborn’s life. His firstborn, and then his second a year later. Then both of them right up until Eddard’s second nameday, when Walys judged Ned strong enough for the brothers to finally start playing together. Rickard would have allowed it sooner, but while Brandon hadn’t shown himself to be particularly brash, he _did_ have a strong and persistent toddler grip.

Usually on his beard. Anything to make his father spend more time with him. It was part of why it grew so thick so quickly, Rickard was sure of it.

Sitting with his wife and watching the two children play together for the first time in the Godswood should have been the best day of his life.

Then Brandon toddled into sight of the Heart Tree, looked at it and froze like a green boy borne down on by a boar.

Then collapsed like deadwood.

And that was how Rickard Stark finally, _finally_ learned what should truly have been his first life lesson.

The Gods were cruel.

Why else would they strike down his son? He was barely more than an infant!

Brandon didn’t die, but it might have been more merciful if he had. He didn’t wake for over a moonturn. Instead he was laid out in bed, weak and sweaty and his brow burning hotter than the most blistering summer sun. Rickard tried to hope, tried to focus on what his son _wasn’t_ going through. He wasn’t coughing, he wasn’t wailing in pain, he wasn’t coughing blood. But it was useless! What was the point in hope when his boy tossed, turned, moaned unintelligibly and grew more and more emaciated after sweating himself almost to death every damned night? He couldn’t even take any of Walys’ useless ‘remedies’ without puking out what little soup Lyarra could get him to swallow down!

It was all Rickard could do to wear his stone-cold silence and be strong for his wife, instead of cursing and screaming and hurling everything at hand against the walls. It wasn’t enough it took his parents so early on, the wasting sickness just had to have his son? Curse this fate, curse the Gods, and curse every last, useless grey rat!

And curse _him_ for _still_ letting hope kindle in his heart when Walys came to him hesitantly one morning and told him the fever had passed and Brandon had woken at some point in the night. He should have waited. He should have let the Maester finish. Instead, the father rushed to his son’s bedside and got to see the horrible truth for himself.

Brandon was weak. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t feed himself anymore and he could barely hold down food half the time. If that was it, Rickard might have let it pass as after-sickness. But it wasn’t. It was worse than that. Brandon could barely focus on anything, barely even _noticed_ them in the room, and when he did bring himself together, he couldn’t hold a train of thought for more than a minute without suffering severe moodswings. And when he tried to talk, oh Gods, that was the worst. No matter how hard and steadily and _slowly_ he tried – and Gods he _tried_ – all but one in ten words came out as total _gibberish_.

For the first time in his life, Rickard Stark could not be the pillar for his distraught wife.

And that was how, having secluded himself in his solar with his papers and audiences and complaints and his bitterness, Rickard Stark learned his second life lesson.

The Gods were fickle.

His son was _broken_.

If Lyarra hadn’t clung to Ned all those fraught weeks wherever she went, including the Godswood while she prayed, he might have decided then and there to never let any of his children within sight of the Gods again.

The thought would haunt him for a sennight and then some, every time Walys – the only member of the household who could dare bring up his son in his presence anymore, and even then only out of duty – would come to give his twice-daily report. Rickard’s young, gormless self might have still thought it encouraging: Brandon was adjusting, focusing ever so slightly better every day, putting meat back on his bones. He was even relearning to talk a bit more each day, thanks to Lyarra who barely ever left his bedside these days. She’d even moved Eddard’s crib in the same quarters. Once, Walys even dared imply his boy was embarrassed. And that he used it toward striving to go without help to and back from the pot.

But when Walys came to him one moon after his son woke up, the reality turned out to be as terrible as every time before.

“He survives, my Lord. With time and effort, it may be he will regain what he lost. Perhaps even catch up to where young Ned is now, in time, but…”

“…But?”

“But I fear there is little hope for more than that. The Citadel has many records on child sicknesses. They might kill and they might not. They can be cruel. They can be kind. But what they all are is _fleeting_. This is not fleeting. This was no childhood sickness, and if the brainstom hasn’t cleared by now, I fear there is no natural way for it to ever do so. There are some scant entries of noble scions that survived some years after such an ordeal, but…”

“ _Speak_ ¸ Maester.”

“But all they did was survive. It was never more than that. And never without help, even for the base things.”

Rickard clenched his fists hard enough that his nails punctured the skin on his palms. Gods, he must be letting himself go if they had time to grow so sharp.

He didn’t know how long he sat there in the darkness, watching dully as the specters of his bitterness and grief-clogged rage swept in and out of the shadows.

When he finally came back to himself, he realized with some distant listlessness that Walys was still there. The older man regarded him with that long, slanted, knowing look that always preceded Rickard’s latest and most humiliating defeat in cyvasse. And always a subsequent lecture that never failed to make him feel adrift and abandoned. By the times, by the Gods, by his father who had died well before he got around to teaching him so very, very much.

“Say what you want to say or leave me in peace.”

“I will do the former, for the latter cannot be if there is no peace to begin with.”

The younger, gormless him would have thought it mockery. The him of now just didn’t care. “Say what you want to say.”

“…Everything changes. The days. The years. The seasons. The world. But if there is one thing that can change quicker than all the rest, it is life. More than that, the men who live it.”

“Speak plainly Maester, I’ve no patience for southron games today.”

“Perhaps you should, seeing as we are dancing around the proof that the North perhaps hasn’t changed as much as it ought.”

The stupefied outrage at this _intruder_ having the gall to even say such a thing… It barely sparked. Then it disappeared as if it had never been at all. “I should banish you for that.”

“Now or never, My Lord.”

Rickard Stark blinked, then slowly gathered himself and focused on the man before him. “What did you say?” Did the man just issue an ultimatum?

“A man’s conviction is only as strong as his most weighty decision,” Walys said, calm and steady like Rickard no longer seemed to manage to be for anyone. “We are what we are in the dark.”

“… What am I, then?”

“I could not say.”

“What _can_ you say then?”

“That you have a decision to make.”

Rickard Stark turned his eyes away and looked blankly at the wall behind the man.

“The Gods of Earth, Stone, and Tree are nameless and voiceless, but they are not the Gods of Men. They never have been. Perhaps they never shall be.”

The flickering flames of the candle barely reached the far wall, but they did enough to expose the doom and gloom and dark monsters shaped like eyes amidst white branches.

“I will be the first to admit I was perplexed when I came from foreign lands into this fastness, bereft of monuments or indeed a clergy.”

They leered at him as they sprung from the dark places in his imagination.

“Now, however, having seen what we have seen, perhaps that is just the least of their strangeness. It is said that only six things do the Old Gods abhor: oathbreaking, kinslaying, slavery, incest, the defilement of guest-right, and the destruction of their sacred Heart Trees. All good tenets for what not to do. But none, you will find, for what a man _should_ do. They do not teach you how to live. How to love. How to rule. They do not teach you how to raise a scion. They do not tell how to bring up the firstborn who should carry all your hopes and dreams for the future. They do not teach what to do in this changing world when that vessel is stricken and lessened and left never able to change at all, if not in body then in mind.”

They didn’t teach him what to do when his son was struck down by their own kind.

Maybe it was for the best they didn’t. He didn’t know _what_ he’d do if it were a man that came to him with the gall to _lecture_ after _they_ were the one who ruined his boy to begin with. For the Gods to do it…

There was nothing in their tenets that said _They_ couldn’t just claim who they wanted, but doing it like that…

In the Winterfell Godswood. _His_ fastness. Where _They_ were technically under _guest right_.

There was a noxious feeling at the back of his mind. It wreathed and clawed around the pillars propping up the precepts and beliefs that had carried him his whole life.

Maester Walys’ words came as if through a fog, distant and low but crystal clear as they gave voice to the damning truth that Rickard was too craven to give way. “If not the Old Gods, then another. You needn’t even look for him too far, I imagine. He wanders always, through near and far off places. And his gift is one that all receive in time. Only… Perhaps bit more gently this time.”

There was so much else that had been left unsaid. But as always, the Maester said just enough for Rickard to dwell on everything else himself. Happiness that seemed too long ago now. Shock. Anger. Worry deep-set enough to keep him up at night. Hopelessness. Despair. The knowledge that he’d only half-managed to keep everything quiet. Which meant that everyone knew their Lord’s son and heir had taken ill, but not that he’d _recovered_.

Except he hadn’t, had he?

The candle went out and Rickard Stark realized that, at some point, his Maester had dismissed himself and left him alone with the darkness hanging over him like the world’s last death rattle.

Then he went off to his son’s sickroom, ordered Lyarra off to rest up, and went to give his precious son and heir his final bath.

And that was how Rickard Stark learned his third life lesson.

The Gods could do without him, he was a coward, and Brandon _knew_ he was broken but he was still trying to fix himself.


	3. My Children’s Father Is Simply the Worst (II)

“-. 265 – 272 AC .-“

Rickard Stark was twenty when he realized that aloof, stony silence had become his way of life. It defined all he did. All he knew. All it could. Even those things he went out of his way to avoid. Like his firstborn child, who he handed off to that one knight that had led his guard that time Maester Walys prevailed upon him to go South for the Harvest Festival.

For the most part, Rodrik Cassel’s reports blurred together. The child is eating fine. The boy is crawling. The boy is walking. Little lord‘s started talking. The young lord’s quite the sorehead. Young Wolf is growing wild there. My Lord, the little Wild Wolf almost snuck into the Heartsglade right under my nose! I will humbly accept any punishment!

“He is _never_ allowed in there, am I understood?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Rickard generally controlled his impulse to take the man up on his punishment offer, but sometimes the knight came really close to overstepping and Rickard just couldn’t help himself.

“My Lord, your son appears to have fully regained his words.”

“That’s good. Now if there’s nothing else?”

“In case you happened to respond this way, the Young Lord instructed me to ask if there’s nothing _you_ might have to say.”

“…What did you just say?” For one bizarre moment, Lord Rickard Stark was actually lost for words. “Do grown knights now make a habit of indulging the words out of a stripling’s mouth?”

“Only the trustworthy ones and I trust and believe in your son, My Lord.” The man was respectful and deferential and earnest enough to put children to bed. “Don’t you?”

One form or another, something like this happened every sennight. Each time, the outrage over being questioned by his sworn man so audaciously waged a swift and terrible war with pride over having a son capable of winning loyalty like this.

The former generally won. He had no right to take pride in Brandon at all. “…Three days of training the worst chaff for your insolence.”

“Very well My Lord.”

“You’re dismissed.”

“As you say, My Lord.”

Unlike Cassel, his wife was not so easy to ignore. Or dismiss. Nor was she willing to leave it at him never intruding on her related personal business. Like, say, the way he didn’t order her to give up the ship on Brandon like he did.

“How long will this keep going on, husband? He’s recovered his words and his strength and can walk on his own again and even run, despite the portents of doom the Maester gave. Not a day goes by without him asking after you. Why are you treating him as if he’s wronged you? If not for his sake, then what about mine? What about Ned’s? What even about yours? How long do you mean to treat your firstborn son as if he were a bastard? Do you not realise where this has started to send tongues wagging?”

“Do you think I don’t know all this, woman?” When he barely had any appetite most days? When, every time he sat down for a meal, he wondered if his firtsborn would ever be fit to attend even something as base as a family meal?

He knew well what the servants would say. What smallfolk would say. What they _did_. What a jovial boy. What a bright little lord. What life in the young lord. A shame what happened to him. Such a shame that brainstorm that got him. A real shame what all the headaches that strike him. Shame. Shame.

Shame, shame, shame, _shame_. The shame of House Stark that had to be kept out of sight lest his weakness and headaches and moodswings take him for all to see.

And what of Lyarra? Would she be doomed to bear him through everything forever? Would she let herself go in her despair? Would she remain Brandon’s dependent wetnurse while he was tied to her apron strings for the rest of his life? What of himself? Could he doom his son to this half-life? Could he live with himself? And what of Eddard? Did _he_ deserve the neglect of not just his father but his mother? Did he deserve the other hardships that would result from this? Did he deserve the kinstrife when… when…

And so aloof, stony silence became Rickard Stark’s way of life and stayed that way for years to come. And as it did, Lyarra swung between cold and haughty and grief-stricken and standoffish every other moonturn. Never forgiving him. Seldom on the same page as him. And perpetually unsatisfied even as she nagged and pulled and tugged and cajoled him back to bed every evening.

“By the seven hells, woman, what all will it take for you to let me have some peace?”

“By all the seven hells neither of us believe in, husband, nothing is what! I don’t care _how_ much of your duties you’ve forsworn. _I_ still plan to see all of mine through and then some. I expect the man I married to rise to the occasion!”

Lyanna was a child born of succor, not passion, and Benjen turned out far too bright and cheerful for the spawn of hatemaking warred on New Year’s night.

Especially with everything else that happened when he was born in the ninth month of that same year. When Rickard emerged from his newest son’s first swaddling, it was to find out that Brandon had been found in the Godswood. Drooling at the mouth. Insensate. In front of the _Heart Tree_.

For one dark, dreadful moment, Rickard Stark genuinely considered cutting down that wretched tree and damn the consequences.

He didn’t. He settled for Cassel’s head instead.

“Speak your last words,” he demanded despite not wanting to hear anything the man had to say.

“I trust and believe in your son, My Lord,” the man said, calling up their strange, on and off exchange as the guards forced him down upon the chopping block. “Don’t you?”

“In the name of Aerys of the House Targaryen, second of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, I, Rickard of the House Stark, sentence you to die.”

Long ago, when his father took Rickard to see his first execution when he was ten years old, they had a talk about what it meant to swing the sword. Lord Edwyle Stark said that it was important. That their ways were the old ways. That if you stare a man in the eye and can’t bring down the sword, then maybe the man doesn’t deserve to die after all.

There and then, in view of the rest of the guard and his lord and the man’s own brother, under the gaze of even the Heart Tree – in front of which Rickard Stark had had the chopping block dragged out of spite – Rodrik Cassel had eyes just like that.

Lord Rickard Stark swung the sword anyway.

Maybe blood sacrifice would finally glut whatever appetite the fickle Gods couldn’t wait to sate for another lifetime.

The next day, it turned out that Brandon had used his newest sibling’s birth as a diversion to give Rodrik the slip and scamper off. Cassel then spent the whole day asking after and looking literally _everywhere_ for him, _including_ the Godswood and Heart Tree clearing at three different times. All the while, the boy was wandering up and down the woods picking mind-twisting mushrooms. They’d found a pile of them just outside the glade’s tree line!

Rodrik Cassel didn’t deserve to die and Rickard Stark didn’t deserve House Cassel’s loyalty. But the man _had_ failed his duty and didn’t speak up in his own defence even once. It was as close to a literal admission of guilt as it could get. Even with his brother there. He just _defended Brandon_. And now it was done. Rickard had executed a loyal man and there was no more that could be done.

He washed his hands entirely of Brandon then. Every last one of his decisions involving him just seemed to be the wrong one. Everyone would probably be better off if he just stepped away entirely. Especially Brandon himself. Summoning his wife, he told her she had free reign over the boy’s affairs thenceforth. And that he wanted to hear nothing more on it from that moment onward.

“What do you mean ‘it’? He’s your son.”

She knew that was not what he meant, but he was too soul-weary to argue with her and his word was law.

And so it was.

Three days later, though, when he was out inspecting the guards training in the yard, Lyarra emerged from the keep and was ‘dragged’ by Brandon – he’d grown so much – right up to where Martyn Cassel stood as if about to request an audience, a rolled-up scroll in hand. Then his firstborn son promptly and _officially_ apologised. He even made it seem like a duty he, his father, had prescribed. Without actually saying or implying it.

Rickard summoned Martyn to his solar after his rounds were done. What else was he going to do, make himself out to have less honor than an addled child? He then offered his own apology. Paid the weregild afforded to a landed knight. Cassel did about as good job of imitating a cold rock as he did. Then told him he had been set to leave his service. He’d been on the fence only due to how Rodrik had taken responsibility. Spared the rest of their house from censure and obviously meant for them to go on as close to normal as possible once he was gone. But Martyn had been on the verge of forswearing House Stark despite all that, until Brandon tipped him back.

Then Martyn really floored him. “I would take up my brother’s duties.”

“… I cannot grant that,” Rickard managed to sound normal despite a suddenly tight throat. “Even if I were certain of your intentions, I cannot abide the risk that my son will suffer the consequences of my mistake through you, whichever way it might be.”

Martyn looked surprised. At his admission of guilt or whatever else, he wasn’t sure. But then closed his face back down and nodded. “As you say, My Lord.”

“You may go.”

He went.

Except it didn’t take more than a week for Brandon to strike up an acquaintance with Martyn Cassel. And no more than a moon to decide he could be trusted to be his sworn sword after all. Something Lyarra took great satisfaction in granting without even consulting the Lord of Winterfell, seeing as Rickard had so generously decreed that she had full, ultimate authority on all decisions involving the Heir of the North until further notice.

He didn’t deserve House Cassel’s loyalty, but maybe Brandon did.

Even so, Rickard was ready to return to what had been his normal. It even worked for a time. Up until Benjen’s fourth nameday. Specifically, the feast.

Then Brandon Stark walked through the doors, made his way to the head table, plopped down between Lyarra and Ned – “Mother, Father, siblings mine” – and promptly began to fill his plate with two grown men’s worth of foodstuffs.

The boy gave no indication that this was the first official appearance of his whole life. He didn’t seem to notice or care that he was suddenly the only human being talking in the entire hall. Lyarra gave no indication that this was anything out of the ordinary either. What she did do was act as if this had been happening all their life. As if she wasn’t the only one who could have ordered Martyn to step back from his posting and join the lower table for the rest of the evening.

What Brandon did do was pretend Eddard and Lyanna weren’t gawking between him and the hall. He also produced a stack of uncommonly fresh white paper, and passed it along Lyarra to Rickard when it seemed like no one else was going to move or speak up.

There had to be a hundred different sheets affixed on a thin spring. And the first two-some dozen of them were filled with numbers, lines and calculations.

“Preliminary cost versus benefits analysis and sample product all in one,” Brandon said as if reporting on a project Rickard had assigned at some point in the past. “Current estimate after total shift to in-house production is roughly eight in ten parts cut from administration expenses. Also, one hundredth reduction to all house expenses overall. That’s without counting all the logistical and trade-related expenses that will be free to shift somewhere else. When you have the time, I’d like to go over the finer numbers.”

“… We will speak after dinner.”

Brandon nodded, and that was that.

What was he going to do, say no?

It took all Rickard had to pretend he knew what he was talking about when fielding the many questions that ensued from everywhere afterwards. He excused himself from the feast as soon as courtesy allowed.

“You’ll still sing to us, right?” Benjen asked Brandon as they both rose.

“He sings for us most every night,” Eddard volunteered out of nowhere, eyes clouded with all the accusation he wouldn’t show on his face.

“He also comes up with the best games and doll figures!” Lyanna obliviously gushed around her chicken leg. “But his songs are the best! They’re all new and exciting and he can scream the same sound literally _forever_.”

Brandon could sing?

“Oh, you think I’m good enough to do it here, is that it?” The older boy poked Ned in the forehead. “I’ll sing you all to sleep later, not here. Stage fright is a powerful thing.” Except his tone really said _I don’t need to prove anything._

Though maybe Rickard was imagining it. He’d certainly been imagining a lot of things that were nowhere close to reality, it seemed.

Much could be said about the meeting between them, and how thoroughly Rickard botched it just on sheer habit of being short and curt with everything that called up his self-loathing.

_You could hug me every once in a while._

More could be said about that play time Brandon called in his ‘debt’ for, a moon later. More still about how much was thrown in his face through that strange game of Brandon’s own devising. One that bested cyvasse in practically everything but age.

Without Rickard even knowing it, his firstborn son had caught up to where he should have been and then soared on ahead. But instead of resenting or hating or shunning his siblings out of spite and bitterness, he’d gone and given them everything Rickard wouldn’t give _him._ Even cut years off the time it took them to learn their letters and numbers and house sigils and _throwing dice_. Gambling! At their age! Inconceivable!

The scandal!

And the nerve of _him_ to think his son would still be such a simpleton as to blame anyone but Rickard himself for everything wrong in his life.

Perhaps it was all he deserved, Rickard thought, that Brandon himself would be the one to teach him this one lesson. The lesson he should have learned before all the others, big and small.

The world does not turn on the will of one man.

Turns out it could _change_ by it, though. In fact, it could even change by the will of one boy, as Rickard found out at the end of that very year. Though not without copious forewarning. Most of which he stayed blind to. Deliberately. Like the craven fool he’d long since acknowledged that he was in the dark.

“A New Year’s fair?”

“Already prepared and paid for from your son’s investments. All it needs is your seal of approval for the venue and guard detail.”

The North was just tightening its belt for the first stage of rationing and they expected people to come out and party? They thought they’d spare the food? That they would leave their homes? On one of the shortest days of the year? In the middle of _winter_?

Wait, Brandon had investments!?

If he hadn’t already known why he always learned last about these things, the look on his wife’s face certainly would have reminded him.

He dismissed her with the promise to consider the offer.

The expense sheet was actually a stack of papers held together with what people had taken to calling a ‘paperclip.’ It was a fairly long list written up in that new, double-entry form that Lyarra had practically forced upon the household staff on pain of taking all her stress out on them. Since Lyanna was just starting to show at the time, not even the castellan dared complain. Rickard allowed it on the belief that it would prove a failed enterprise and his wife would relent within a moon at best. Instead, the new system proved accurate, efficient and capable of preventing so many accounting ‘errors’ that he mandated its use to the entirety of Winterfell, from where it soon spread to all of Wintertown.

The man didn’t recognize the hand. But he didn’t need to guess either. He didn’t expect it to be such terrible chicken scrawl. But it conjured up some of his best and worst memories all the same.

_I don’t know what this thing is between us._

Rickard Stark read and re-read the papers. Expenses that covered the usual, the not so usual, and enough timber to raise a longhouse. Plus an entire page of things – items, goods and activities – whose names he‘d never even heard of.

_You’re not even a bad father._

Rickard Stark returned the papers that same evening, sealed and signed.

_By Winter’s end, you won’t stomach the thought of shunning or pawning me off ever again._

Rickard Stark had no right to take pride in Brandon, but he was a fool who lacked conviction and took pride in him all the same.


	4. My Children’s Father Is Simply the Worst (III)

"-. 273 AC .-"

New Year’s Day dawned bright, crisp and covered in a fresh layer of snow. It was knee-deep, thick and didn’t delay any of the festivities. On account of grumpy and long-suffering parents and elders that were all but dragged out of their homes by eager children at the hour of the nightingale. The paths leading out of Winterfell and Wintertown were cleared entirely incidentally, by drowsy men eager to drum up some warmth against the biting chill. And the track to the fair grounds was shaved and tamped by a throng of tromping boots and cart wheels, led by horses dragging wedge plows in the wake of dog sleighs bearing Lyarra and the little ones ahead.

Lord Rickard of the House Stark didn’t ride out with the first whelming. Or the second. Or the third. He made sure Winterfell was well secured first, pretended he didn’t overhear the active duty guards grouse over missing the festivities, and then rode around the castle entire to check on any mishaps that might have occurred. Double checked that the two oxen and logs were ready too, in case it snowed again and they needed to re-open the road. As quaint as dog sleighs were turning out to be despite their wildling likeness, there were only three of them.

Then he made a round through Wintertown itself. The paths were a great deal the same as those he’d taken to traveling twice as often as usual over the past moon. Part of it had been to track the ongoing preparations and check with the various artisans and tradesmen on the various goods and attractions. The other was to inquire into Brandon’s business transactions now that he knew about them, just in case.

It was a good thing he did. While the tradesmen had mostly kept in mind who they were dealing with – rumors or not – a handful of the bigger farmers were swindling his son on the costs of feed, seed and fertiliser.

Unfortunately for them, having to rule a half-empty and maester-less castle at six and ten namedays had many profound effects on Rickard Stark. One being that he’d had to directly manage inventory, oversee all supply orders, and generally spend all his time outside his chief responsibilities _counting coppers_. Six moons made for a _lot_ of counted coppers. Not the best reputation for a Lord to be saddled with, especially a Lord Paramount, but such was his burden. And on occasions such as this? He could easily admit it put a smile on his face. One very effective at getting people to fall over themselves apologising and reimbursing and swearing not to do it ever again. Not to their investors at any rate. Especially their liege lord’s heir.

As he finally rode out with his retinue, Rickard felt another one of those undeserved bursts of pride he tended to get when thinking of Brandon these days. Whatever empowered those miscreants to cheat him, his boy had been well placed to get his own back in the future. The uppity farmers seemed unaware of just how many other, middling and smaller farms Brandon had _also_ approached. Lent coin to use what little of their land they could risk on experiments with new crop combinations over the last two years, up to the start of winter. None of those men were afflicted with the same brand of foolishness as Rickard had just had the displeasure of stomping on.

It would be impossible to widely apply any of the new methods until spring came again, the ones that were promising at least. But he found himself looking forward to it. Maybe he’ll even test some of the vegetable cycles in the glass garden, meanwhile. He didn’t know if anything would come of it. He couldn’t imagine there was anything men hadn’t already tried in over eight thousand years. But a fair few of the farms had recouped on Brandon’s investment and then some, tiny though it was. So he wasn’t going to write anything off. He wasn’t going to write off anything Brandon did anymore.

He was still on the fence about the mushrooms though. And no one seemed to know why Brandon had filled that storehouse with so much food and produce only to let it spoil. The freeze had gotten to it before the mold could spread or stink up the place, thankfully, but it would be hell to clear it out come spring.

Alas. He supposed even his little wonder-maker didn’t always get everything right the first time.

The Fair was taking place north of Winterfell, near a lake located five hours away on foot and fed by a middling stream. It was not on any maps. At least none of the ones that ever made it south of the Neck, and which omitted half of their known food sources among other things. But the spot was quite sizable for all that, and actually a fairly popular fishing spot during summertime.

Alas, not all his traveling companions were as interested as he was in seeing what it was like in winter. “Missing your drafty tower already, Maester?”

“Of course not My Lord,” Maester Walys grunted from beneath the thickest fur coat in Winterfell and thrice the usual number of coverings beneath that. He looked ridiculous. “Why ever would I do such a thing? I am but wrinkled skin and old bones under this.”

“Old Nan is older than you and she left with the first whelming all the same.”

“That witch is older than everyone.”

Actually, she wasn’t. Moreover… “That _witch_ was my uncle’s wetnurse and caretaker.” Until he died at three namedays. Like his… namesake almost did.

“Of course, My Lord. I apologise. The cold must have gotten to me after all.”

There was a time when Rickard didn’t have a problem knowing if the man meant what he said or not. He wondered when things had changed.

That’s when he saw the kites.

They were the first of several things the artisans had no explanation for. Brandon hadn’t explained. Wanted them a surprise. And they certainly were. Wispy crafts that soared high in the air, tethered and anchored to the earth by a single string. Which _hadn’t_ been part of the same commission. Bridles and long, sinuous tails and streamers fluttered and glided behind them as they stood against the wind, tugged to and fro by people and children running around the fields. They swooped. Soared high up against the wind.

Rickard stared at them, awestruck.

His son could make things _fly_.

A second distraction jumped at him once they crested the lake’s basin. It was the sheer multitude of snow huts. He knew to expect them and had even visited the grounds earlier in the moon, but they were still impressive now that they were complete. He’d been sceptical of them until the masons made one for him to inspect, the day after he approved the Fair. Then he ordered the knowledge spread as quickly and far across the North as possible. Even funnelled some of the coin freed up by Brandon’s paper into helping fund as many as were needed to ensure people had shelter even if Wintertown filled to capacity. A hut could be so small that you had to crawl into it, but it beat dying in the cold and even gave you a place to light your hearth. Even if the other lords were slow on the take, Rickard couldn’t begin to guess how the Night Watch would change because of them.

The huts here weren’t that small. Some hadn’t even been completed at the front, to leave the entrance man-sized despite the draft, since they were designed as stalls more than anything. But they did their job and almost blended into the landscape from afar. Except for one. The very large one in the middle of the encampment, just off the lake’s bank. Two Stark Banners hung proudly around the entrance, flapping in the wind. The Snow House was as wide as the broken tower, tall as a two-story home and even had small windows. The builders’ cabin fever must already be legendary if they went to these kinds of lengths to fill their time, the man thought bemusedly.

All around the lake, people were mingling, talking, eating, drinking and peddling a whole market’s worth of goods. All while pointing and waving at the children ridden around on dog sleighs driven by kennel masters. Beyond them all, along the lake banks proper, were three great bonfires arrayed in a wedge. They were dwarfed by the fourth, though, built in the middle of the lake atop the ice. All four had yet to be lit. The sign that the fair proper _hadn’t_ actually started.

He was looking forward to it.

And so Lord Rickard of House Stark started the new year eating a hearty lunch to the background sounds of laughing children. Salted and spiced sausage rolls and a beef bun fried in pig grease set between two slices of wheatbread. He washed them down with mulled wine right off the fire. And because he didn’t feel the need to take shelter immediately, he sat on a bench outside with wife at his side and watched his children run around. Well, three of four more like.

Already it was the second best day of his life.

Eventually, his arrival was finally noticed by his little ones. His litter gave a new meaning to having your head in the clouds. Not that the spectacle leading up to it was any less entertaining.

“No! I almost had him!” Lyanna cried in dismay as her dove kite was smacked by a direwolf with streamers shaped like fangs. Just before it would have assaulted a big white dragon too. “You fiend, why are you helping him? Why aren’t you helping _me_!?”

“Walder’s barely learned how to make it lift,” Eddard said dryly. Walder being a giant of a boy almost the size of a man grown despite being Ned’s age. Old Nan’s grandson. “And we promised not to bully him.”

“You did, not me.”

“Sister.”

“Well it’s true! Besides, I’m not actually bullying him, isn’t that right Walder?”

“Of course not, m’lady.”

“See, even he-hey! Did you just flinch away? You did! You did, didn’t y-“

“Ha-HA!”

SMASH.

“Nooo!” Lyanna wailed as Benjen’s raven wrecked her white dove as the dog sleigh shot by. And there was much rejoicing. Well, from the children with him. “No no no no NO! PAPA!”

“Hn,” Rickard grunted as he stooped to receive an armful of daughter. He ignored the hidden smile his wife let him only him see from where she was spinning replacement strings. Old Nan’s too. “Has my existence finally a purpose then?”

“Ned’s being mean!”

Not Benjen? “Is he now?”

“I admit to everything,” Eddard said shamelessly.

“Wha- he’s not even denying it!”

“So I see,” Rickard sighed. “Have you naught to say in defence, boy?”

Eddard Stark smiled mildly, his Direwolf still proudly defying the gale. “Honour before fault, not reason.”

Lyanna pulled a face not unlike whenever her brothers repeated something said by Brandon in the past. Rickard was becoming an old hand at recognizing them.

For better or worse.

“Yes, well… You’re a grumpkin! I’ll get you, just you wait!”

“Such is my b-“

“Don’t say it!”

“-urden.”

“Papa, Ned’s being mean to me!”

“Because you’re a terrible person,” Ned said.

“WHAT!? You take that back!”

“Oblivious too, Old Nan is literally right there.”

“I knew it! You don’t love me anymore!”

“Hardly. I just know the different between love and like.” Something weighty suddenly seemed to pass over Ned’s face. “Don’t you?”

Rickard recognized those looks on Ned now too.

The drama, though, was cut short by the resounding blare of a bullhorn.

All over the fair grounds people jumped, flinched and stumbled at the sudden noise. Rickard shot to his feet and looked sharply for the source. Were the sentries sounding a call to arms? If the Gods were so spiteful that they’d conjure bandits out of nowhere to ruin even _this_ for his son, he swore he’d-!

“Bran!” Lyanna practically scaled him all the way up. “It’s Bran! Look, Look! There he is, see?”

He had to crane his head away from her flailing limbs but yes, he did see. Saw him use two long poles to slide to a halt all the way on the far bank of the lake. Next to where Martyn Cassel was just lowering the bullhorn that had shaken everything. The boy let go of the sticks, stooped over to unclasp some odd, long boards from his shoes, then sat down and affixed… something else to his boots. More shoes. Shoes over shoes?

He then used whatever they were to all but _fly_ across the ice.

Stark guards pushed people every which way as he strode towards the edge of the bank, but Rickard still didn’t get there before Brandon did. He heard his son’s sudden turn more than he saw it, screeching to a halt in a way that sent ice spraying ahead of him. By the time the people realized who was pushing to the front and cleared the way, Brandon was already shooting away with a torch that Eddard had given him, and since when was Rickard so easily distracted from his other children!?

Rickard stared after his firstborn. Was he gliding on _blades_?

Brandon scraped to a halt in front of the great bonfire, wound back and threw the torch all the way to the top. A sudden gust blew it askew, and had the Gods chosen this moment for their tricks… Rickard might not have _completely_ gone Bran the Burner, but there were plenty other levels of angry between him and there. Thankfully, the torch was not pushed enough that it didn’t land more or less where it should.

The wood and straw soon caught and burst into a merry, crackling blaze.

The boy turned around then and cast his eyes over the crowd.

…Oh why not?

Rickard Stark turned, took the guard captain’s own bullhorn and climbed onto the nearest pulpit. “LET THE GAMES BEGIN!”

The Lord Paramount of the North imagined he’d never heard cheers so long and mighty even at his wedding, but in that moment he had neither eyes nor ears for any of them. Barely wearing more than summer wear and standing on the ice to the backdrop of the tallest bonfire, his son looked every bit the lord he would one day become.

The boy had all the entitlement of one too, because he showed no qualms about making every last of the drudge work involved in _his_ fair his father’s problem. Case in point, the brat just begged off to make water!

Oh, it was just as well. Rickard had literally been raised for this.

The mainstays were as present as ever, with carving, baking, sewing, even wrestling, fistfights and some archery. As always, though, the best attractions were the novel ones. Even after a moon of preparing, Rickard was still surprised at the variety of things his son had come up with. Battledore and shuttlecock – ha! – sleigh-racing, kiting, frisbee, skiing, _skating_. True to form, the games immediately became outlets for everyone’s unresolved feuds and seasonal moodswings. Sometimes before they even properly learned the rules. Usually from fishermen, oddly enough. It turned out Brandon had roped them into learning the games beforehand so they’d teach them to everyone else and act as scorekeepers. On account of them not having much other way to contribute to the fair itself for obvious reasons. Also, because Brandon wasn’t about to run around doing it. Having washed his hands of any responsibility, his boy was now teaching skating to whoever wasn’t afraid of falling over half a dozen ways. Incidentally, this meant that the increasing number of ‘contests’ and the resulting chaos were entirely Rickard Stark’s problem.

But it’s not like he’d ever put such pressure or responsibility on his son at his age, and Rickard _had_ been raised for this. He was easily able to assign locations and schedules while keeping paths clear for traffic, even as he set aside some time for himself.

He wasn’t about to attend a fair without partaking of the festivities! Especially when Brandon had worked so hard on them. In particular, Rickard gravitated towards two games that seemed entirely out of this world. They had him convinced his son had decided to avenge himself on the cruel hand he’d been dealt. Specifically, by living _literally_ off the back of a certain gibberish problem. Which still cropped up fairly regularly, to hear Walys describe it. Various unguarded comments from his other children and even his wife indicated the same.

One game was played with cards made of paperboard. They each had various plus and minus values on them, which you were expected to use along with deck draws to get closer to twenty than the other player, and no higher. Rickard thought it wouldn’t be long before the game taught their numbers to everyone and their grandmother. Brandon called it Pazaak.

The second game was the only one that merited its own, dedicated guard force and was not allowed to be removed from the central table in the Snow House. It was also a card game, but delicately drawn and written over the course of what may have been months. Each card a military unit, warrior, noble, archetype or a strategic card represented by different forms of weather or landscape. And on the rare occasion, you’d draw a card that bore the name and sketch of a famous figure from myth and history, with score and skill to match. It was a game of tactics and strategy never before seen or heard of. A game that expected you to wage three battles in a row with the same hand. His son had named it Gwent.

For Rickard, it was an eye-opener in more than one way. And that didn’t include how different people behaved when in front of an audience. “Another round, Maester?”

“If it’s all the same, My Lord, I think I should retire before humiliation has a chance to finish what the cold began.”

“Come now, it’s only been three games,” which the Maester had lost. In a row. To Rickard. It was a new, heady experience. “I can’t remember how many times I lost to you at cyvasse.” To say nothing of the subsequent lectures that never failed to make him feel inadequate.

“Cyvasse has history, weight and intricacy. This,” the Maester waved dismissively at the board, “Is but childish fancy. No matter how pretty the sketches, it shall be forgotten before week’s end, mark my words.”

“It’s different not being the only one who knows the tricks, isn’t it?”

Between one moment and the next, Rickard Stark could have sworn Walys Flowers’ countenance was redolent of absolute distaste.

But by the time he’d turned to the new speaker – because it _was_ a new speaker – the Maester was back to looking like a man well on the way to playing the role of everyone’s favorite grandfather. “Lord Brandon. I didn’t see you there. I thought you’d still be trying to teach the little people how to skim.”

Distaste. Towards Brandon. Surely not.

“Skate,” Brandon corrected as he stepped around the man with barely a glance. “And not so little at all. Turns out Walder’s a natural. Someone on his father’s side must have been _very_ spry.”

What was this? The Maester hadn’t hinted at any animosity between them even after his son’s remark on game night. And Brandon… Rickard couldn’t even tell if… What a strange world it was all of a sudden, that he had as much trouble reading a Maester as his own get.

“Is that so? Mayhap I will catch a glimpse as I leave.”

“But you’ll miss the best parts!” Brandon said. “The bonfire’s finally started to burn low enough to eat through the ice! And the last holdovers for the trebuchet contest only just made it.”

Rickard forced himself not to be distracted by the mention of what he’d been most interested in since finding out _what_ project it was that got a week of preparation time. He’d been veering into tactical musings almost regularly in the days since.

“Nevertheless, needs must. By your leave, My Lord, I shall make an early return to Winterfell.”

Rickard managed not to convey his inner confusion. “Very well. You may go.”

“My thanks, My Lord.”

Rickard hadn’t realized Maesterly pride could be so easily wounded. But then, they all claimed they had none, didn’t they? Ludicrous as it was.

Brandon frowned after the Maester. “That is one shady man.”

“Ha!” Despite himself, Rickard cracked a laugh. “Don’t be too hard on him, the chill’s got him off sorts. He’s only a southerner.”

“Even southerners know winter is coming.”

“Not like that, son. Our words are not a warning, they are a threat to our enemies. We Starks carry the bloodline of the Kings of Winter, and winter is not a foe one can prevail against. Nor one aimed lightly.”

“Watch me,” Brandon muttered so lowly Rickard almost missed it. “I wonder what would’ve happened if you said no.”

“He’d have stayed.” Obviously.

“Obviously,” Brandon huffed, confirming Rickard’s suspicion that he’d missed something. “And been a grumpy nest of grey hairs for the rest of time, I’m sure.”

Brandon Stark and Rickard Stark’s eyes met full-on then.

Suddenly, it seemed to dawn on both father and son that they had engaged in casual banter as if they hadn’t been estranged for the past seven years. Next they knew, it was as if both had gone mute. Soon enough the awkwardness threatened to spill over into the rest of the Snow House and Rickard should probably lay off the mulled spirits if he was getting looks of sympathy from Martyn Cassell, of all people.

What even were they-

“Match!” Came a shout from the crowd.

“Match!” The crowd picked up.

“Match, match, match!”

“Match between the lords!”

Then there were cheers and clapping and the calls soon echoed in everyone and spread even outside.

Brandon grimaced and stuck his hands in his pockets, fidgeting in place for a few moments, but eventually sat where Walys had. “Two out of three?”

“May as well,” Rickard said, wondering how badly he failed to hide his guilty delight at this development. Also, wondering at Brandon’s apparent stress. “Go easy on your old man, will you?”

His son shifted tensely but gazed at him sharply for all that. “I don’t think you need it.”

The first round, Brandon prevailed against Rickard’s Crannogman and Broken King when the Turncoat Ward invoked Suborned Capitol for the Sea Bitch and Ironborn Raider.

On the second round, Lyanna, Benjen and half a dozen other children burst into the Snow House to complain about wanting Brandon for themselves. An unexpectedly stiff Brandon motioned for Martyn to give him his spring stack, ripped one of the pages, and folded it half a dozen ways until it looked like a spear head spade. Rickard was then thoroughly distracted when Brandon tossed it and it just… flew out the door and away. Fortunately, the children made quite a cavalcade when they rushed after it like dogs for a bone, so he wasn’t the only one. Rickard won that round with the King Beyond the Wall and Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, using the ability of the Northern Heiress to deploy during the enemy turn. It cost him the initiative in the last round of the game, but it let him prevail despite Brandon’s play of The Great Castle terrain for the Traitor Lord and the Red Bastard. It had to be the most implausible scenario Rickard ever heard of, but it got the job done.

Then, on the third round, Brandon turned out to have somehow drawn all three of Aegon, Rhaenys and Visenya Targaryen and set them down in siege mode as Dragonriders. So it was to the sour huffs of everyone around them that Rickard Stark played Torrhen Stark and Brandon Snow alongside a Weirwood Bowman and Scorpion. He would hopefully be forgiven for taking satisfaction in everyone’s reactions when he then upended those uncomfortable expectations entirely. He activated Northern Blizzard. It rendered all the cards on the field save Greenseer Brandon Snow all but impotent. And so did the history of Westeros and the North get turned entirely on its head.

It was probably the lowest shame to experience such a heady feeling of victory against a boy of ten namedays. But, as if to make his father burst from pride like a ripe melon, Brandon didn’t make any excuses for his loss. And when the boy slowly looked up from the field, gazed at him as if he were some divine omen and said “That was amazing,” Rickard Stark felt like the most accomplished man in the world.

If he wasn’t already so resolved, he’d have decided then and there that their estrangement wouldn’t survive the night.

Then something somewhere outside fell from the sky.

And that was no doubt how the Gods finally made their play, Rickard thought testily.

He should have expected it really.


	5. My Children's Father is Simply the Worst (IV)

**“-. .-“**

New Year’s Day turned grey, crisp and covered in a fresh layer of dread. It was deep, halting and instantly put a break in the festivities. On account of the blood-splattered, wrecked front of the snow hut belonging to that one woodworker whose family was big enough to both enter the trebuchet contest and run a shop stand on the side.  
  
Lord Rickard of House Stark did not look at the owner. Or the guardsmen. Or the mob. He made sure no bystanders had been harmed first, chose not to disperse the crowd that had so conveniently gathered within hearing, and had those directly involved in the mess detained and brought to him. He also had Lyarra stay back with the children, pretended not to see Brandon all but hunch over something or other from stress in the shadow of his guard, and definitely didn’t despair openly. Even though it became more clear to Rickard by the second that he was the only man alive with any amount of sense. Because what else could he take from this, really?  
  
It wasn’t the Gods. It was smallfolk _stupidity_.  
  
“A farmer, artisan and woodworker gather at a fair,” Rickard Stark said coldly. “Sounds like the set-up for a jape, but as you can see I am _not_ laughing. Explain yourselves. Thoroughly. _Now_.”  
  
The tale that came spilling out was as sordid as it was trivial. It would not have at all warranted the attention of the Lord of Winterfell in any other place on any other day. Save perhaps if he’d had reason to care what a trebuchet was without his son being the one who thought it up. Farmer signs up, woodworker signs up, artisan signs up and has his brood put up a trinket stand for extra profit. Men build their machines, men bring them to the fair, men jape at each other’s expense. Men scowl, men jeer, men drink themselves stupid and slur over who will surely win the gold dragon prize. Artisan insults farmer’s manhood while farmer’s son is wooing woodworker’s daughter to the side, prompting the son to ‘get even’.  
  
“And your way of ‘getting even’ was to launch a pig’s bladder filled with chicken blood out of an unproven craft and _hope_ it would somehow miss everything else while it _flew over the entire fair grounds_?!”  
  
The boy of four and ten flinched at his lord’s biting tone and wilted right where he knelt between two guardsmen.  
  
“Father,” Brandon said as he approached. Rickard pretended not to have seen him practically praying to some kind of small brush for strength. “It appears I arranged for perhaps too many activities to adequately supervise. I take full responsibility.”  
  
“Denied. The amount is fine and you arranged this fair entirely for _them_. I will not have your kindness further taken advantage of, my son.”  
  
“Mercy, m’lord!” The boy’s father begged as he bravely – and unsteadily – pushed through the crowd and fell to his knees next to his spawn. “Mercy, m’lord, please! M’boy’s not a bad lad, he’s just a moron!”  
  
“Clearly. And we don’t want that passed on, now do we?”  
  
The empty threat fell flat. “Please, n’lord, I swear, me lad’ll offer all due recompense!” The farmer all but genuflected and yanked his son – “YEOW! – down by the ear along with him.  
  
This is what he gets for beheading just one man for dereliction of duty, Rickard thought irately. Then again, probably not. If the smallfolk were really worried he was the sort who went executing left and right without due consideration, they’d never have pulled such a stunt in the first place. “Brandon. Can you tell me why stupidity is not an excuse in this instance?”  
  
His boy seemed taken aback, but he rallied quickly and cast a long, searching look over the surroundings.  
  
Good. If he could use this as a lesson, all the better. “Get a good look, son. It’s been made so that you have _all_ the time you need.”  
  
The farmer's boy outright withered under the combined glares of Rickard and his own father. Truly, shame was among the world’s mightiest means.  
  
“Projectile fell at an angle,” Brandon said. Muttered really, rubbing his chin as he walked around. “Payload struck top edge of entrance. Snow hut integrity already undermined due to unfinished front. Despite this, damage limited to front and interior. Minimal splash damage. No collateral damage to neighbouring stalls or huts. No persons harmed besides the owner who happened to just be exiting when the projectile struck.”  
  
The artisan in question scowled venomously from where one of his daughters was wiping his face with a warm cloth and a second was picking frozen blood from his hair. The man’s three sons were arrayed around them all, glaring indignantly.  
  
“Possibility one: precision strike. Possibility two: dumb luck.” Brandon turned and pondered the direction the payload had come from. “Possibility two… unlikely.”  
  
“Just so,” Rickard said flatly. “This was planned, aimed and in _no_ _way_ accidental.” Because you often had to repeat yourself with smallfolk. He kept the other thought to himself. That the feat spoke of either exceptional eye or very thorough practice. Or both. Such a fellow didn’t belong in the ground or de-handed. He belonged on the battlefield working siege arms.  
  
The Lord of Winterfell beheld the son and father, all too aware of the murder of crows that was already scavenging at the edges of the grounds. He was even more aware of Brandon stopping his walk where Rickard could see him pointedly _not_ pleading with him to let the matter go. That was alright. He didn’t need Brandon to be decisive or ruthless at his age. It was easier to teach a kind son to be fair than one who didn’t care. Worse so if he were wicked.  
  
Nevertheless, he would abide by his decision that _nothing_ was going to ruin Brandon’s Winter Fair.  
  
Come evening, Rickard Stark had Brandon on his left, Lyarra and the other children on his right, and they were all sat in the lone stands that had been erected for their family, playing referee. “The Red Army’s cavalry prevails against the Blue Army’s infantry by a 2-point roll difference despite the shield wall maneuver.” He waited for the men on said team to push and tug the tokens into place on the ice with their long crooked poles. “Unit successfully maintains cohesion and remains in play for another turn. Re-roll initiative.”  
  
On the ice, Old Nan’s boy used two flags to signal the order. Shortly after, the now familiar wind-up noise signalled the payload being launched out of the trebuchet. The melon-sized wooden dice clattered to a stop almost perfectly in the middle of where the armies met.  
  
Rickard didn’t watch for it, or how Walder skated over to examine the result. He kept his baleful gaze on the farmer's fool of a son the whole time, challenging though it was to do so in the dusk. The light of the bonfire was the only thing to see by now. Fortunately, it was a very large bonfire.  
  
“When does this get fun?” Lyanna complained around her maple snow cone.  
  
“What, you mean like you?” Ned asked as he chewed on his latest wedge pie. Because Brandon wouldn’t let it pass without also inventing a new dish or three, apparently. “Aren’t you the one always raving about being a warrior?”  
  
“I’m not talking to you.”  
  
“Gods be good, finally some peace.”  
  
Lyanna made to upend her snow cone on Ned’s head but Lyarra took it away and gave it to Benjen instead.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“Thanks, mother!”  
  
“Give that back!”  
  
“No.” Slurp.  
  
Rickard ignored the family drama in favour of the subject of his continued scorn. Which, admittedly, had been fading more and more as the ‘maidenless fair’ continued to carry out his punishment. Rickard had him running from one end to the other of the lake and (mis)firing both sides’ trebuchets. It wasted the lad’s time like he’d wasted everyone’s _and_ made him into a spectacle. Embarrassed and shamed him for the whole first third of the war game. The only mercy he allowed was letting Walder teach him how to skate, mainly to spare themselves having to wait forever while he ran back and forth around the lake. But even that consisted more of helping and outright carrying him for the first couple dozen attempts. A very mild punishment for the unpleasantness he’d caused the gathering before all this, but it served as powerful motivation to learn useful skills quickly.  
  
Shame really was among the world’s mightiest weapons.  
  
“Look at him go,” Brandon murmured. “I think his sweetheart might be _more_ impressed now.”  
  
That was another thing. The whole routine also confirmed to Rickard that the lad learned quickly on his feet and had not just endurance but quite the keen eye. His aim improved dramatically with each game round. Now it was really something to behold, even when he was shooting the ‘enemy’s’ equipment. Rickard had already made a note of the boy’s name on his spring book, but he’ll probably remember him next muster even without it. He wouldn’t say so though. The lad would probably take it as a reward.  
  
“People are really having to squint now,” Brandon commented, echoing his earlier thoughts. “I can barely see the far ends of the battlefield even from here.”  
  
“Fog of war, son,” Rickard said. “They think to take up arms against their neighbour, they can take this glimpse into how the other half lives.”  
  
“The one percent, more like.”  
  
“Just so,” Rickard said dryly. “Though I agree the dusk is nearing the point where it will soon turn against the game’s purpose.”  
  
Which was to say, an all-out-brawl may still be in the making. The artisan and farmer, who’d somehow come up with the same overall trebuchet design _and_ made it man-scale instead of miniature like everyone else, had accused each other of stealing the other’s idea. Guards and basic northern decency had prevented violence until the farmer’s son took matters into his own hands. The disturbance only seemed to have exacerbated tensions though. Case in point, the two fathers had since been ‘leading’ the opposite sides of the field.  
  
The game nevertheless continued the back and forth for a time. It was a surprisingly engaging experience, despite the increasingly basic tactics used as the better units kept being eliminated. Some of the engagements in the War of the Ninepenny Kings had actually been worse from the start, compared to what Rickard was seeing today. The men of the North were no fools, he thought. Well, when there was the gimlet eye of nobility to keep their foolishness suppressed.  
  
“Imagine this, but with people,” Eddard said as the latest dice throws were being set up. “Lords against other lords.”  
  
Rickard blinked, then he indeed imagined it. In fact, he could imagine it _very_ well.  
  
“Exactly!” Lyanna said as if it had been her idea all along. “I bet that would actually be fun.”  
  
Only it would have to happen over the course of many days across real distances and Rickard was never going to take his daughter to play at war out in the Rills. Even disregarding what a loudmouth she could be. Or maybe the Lonely Hills, that would have a chance to draw in more of the high lords and-  
  
“Uh-oh,” Brandon muttered.  
  
Rickard forced his attention back to the present and thinned his lips at the latest and most troublesome dice results. Checking the field once more, he was hard-pressed not to sigh. Maybe the Gods had been making a play all along if this was the result. The same formations. Close enough combat rolls. Equal initiative. “I believe I am about to regret making even this one allowance.” But really, what were the odds that they’d hit all _three_ conditions for a real ‘fight’ between the factions? It wasn’t supposed to happen, even with the obvious collusion!  
  
Lyarra primly got to her feet. “Come, daughter. Benjen. I believe there is an all-new batch of pies and snow cones calling us.”  
  
“What? But I want to watch!” Lyanna cried.  
  
Rickard Stark again ignored his own family drama and stood. “The conditions for Trial by Combat have been met!”  
  
“Oh hell no, it’ll just turn into a shitshow,” Brandon groused and stood. “Father, can I handle this?”  
  
Lyarra and the rest paused in their departure to listen.  
  
Rickard looked down at his son. He was sympathetic, surely. However… “The rule was your idea. You gambled against fate and lost. The responsibility to see it through is yours. And if you renege on your word, the responsibility for the consequences will also be yours.”  
  
“I’m not saying don’t do it,” Brandon denied. “Maybe… reinterpret it a little bit. Choose the type of ‘combat’ right? I have something I’ve kept back. I wasn’t sure I’d have enough takers, but it might just work for this.”  
  
“You may be disappointed, then. When the mob wants blood, they seldom settle for less.” And the crowd seemed just as eager to see an all-out brawl as the ‘teams’ were.  
  
“That should be fine then.”  
  
Half a turn of the hourglass and much loud cheering since, Lord Rickard of House Stark was laughing himself sick.  
  
“Look at’em go!”  
  
“Look at him fall!”  
  
“Shut _up_ Ned-ha!”  
  
“Missed!  
  
“Everyone sucks, isn’t that great!?”  
  
“Daughter!”  
  
“Mother!  
  
“Lyanna!”  
  
“Lyanna!”  
  
“Oh you two shut up!”  
  
“Son, I have to say,” Rickard said, trying and failing to stop laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of what he was seeing. “When you say you’ll ‘end it rightly’ you certainly do.” And Gods, the pratfalls!  
  
“I’m glad _you’re_ enjoying yourself,” his boy groaned.  
  
“Most certainly,” he pushed through his laughter with difficulty. “I might want to see it reprised in the future. What do you call it?”  
  
Brandon huffed. “It was _supposed_ to be hockey, but who the fuck even knows what this is?”  
  
More gibberish?  
  
“Something to love to hate, looks like,” said Eddard.  
  
“I thought the aim was to _not_ throw blood at the mob,” Lyarra said exasperatedly.  
  
“I didn’t think they’d be this bad,” Brandon groused as the fishermen strained to keep their fishnets up lest the latest ‘player’ careen face-first into the bonfire. It still had nothing on the lad who'd had to be carried off after the puck nailed him in the nose. The crowd had loved it.  
  
“Bran’s a dummy!” Lyanna crowed. “Welcome to tonight's all-new game. I’m the heir to the North. Now here's how you play and everything I _don’t_ have rules against.”  
  
“Like shoving,” Ben said.  
  
“Or bucking.”  
  
“Shouldering.  
  
“Smashing.”  
  
“Batting the puck at the other guy’s face rather than the goal,” Lyanna said sagely.  
  
“I’m the bladder-tossing moron’s father,” Rickard got into it with a look at the man that was sitting the game out, looking gloatingly vindicated as his son demolished the competition. “Everything I say is driven by the grudges I hold against every _other_ hoary brigand in Wintertown.”  
  
“I will now go silent,” Brandon said just as flatly. “Just in time for the players to teach young children some new swear words.”  
  
Blue Team lad proceeded to embarrassingly miss the netted frame by a several yards, which rendered moot the point of restricting Walder to defense lest he destroy the other side entirely. Much cussing ensued.  
  
“Oh honestly,” Lyarra griped, not even bothering to try covering Lyanna or Benjen’s ears anymore.  
  
That was when the bonfire dropped several feet at once and a burst of steam billowed up through the flames with a whistling crash.  
  
It should have marked the end of the game, but Rickard decided to allow one more pass.  
  
Later that evening, the end of the newly dubbed Great Winter Fire was expedited in a way that no one expected to work as well as it did. The farmer’s boy was still looking rather shell-shocked after Brandon conscripted him to hit the bonfire with the biggest trebuchet missile he could fit. Truth be told, Rickard had to put some minor effort into masking his opinion as well. He had _not_ expected the explosion of steam that resulted upon the fire falling into the lake wholesale. It had been loud, hot and spectacular.  
  
It also had the benefit of blowing away the leftover, charred stumps while _still_ being far enough that no one got covered in soot or ash. After that, Brandon begged off ‘to arrange the send-off.’ Which, naturally, meant that overseeing the preparation for departure and everything else was once again his father’s problem.  
  
It was proving to be one of the best problems Rickard Stark had ever had. “You wish to stay?”  
  
“Yes m’lord,” said the fisherman that the others had selected to speak for them. “More’n just tonight even. Might not pan out, but if these here huts work as well as they say…”  
  
As he stood on the lake bank, Rickard looked from the man to his fellows who were already casting forth their nets through the great hole left in the ice where the bonfire had been. The three, newly-lit smaller fires painted dancing lights and shades upon them, but he could see enthusiasm in their every move all the same. An overnight stay by the fishermen had been part of the plan to begin with, as even a middling catch was expected to recoup the food costs of the fair. But for them to want that extended indefinitely…  
  
“M’lord?”  
  
“Your request is granted,” Rickard said, taking the offered chance to reel back on the optimism he didn’t dare trust too much these days. “I’ll leave a squad behind to guard and ferry messages as well. We’ll see how it goes and talk again in a sennight.”  
  
“Thank you, m’lord.”  
  
“You may go.”  
  
As the man left with a spring in his step, Rickard turned to the nearest snow hut, thoughts whirling in his mind despite the scepticism he tried to summon up. A permanent fishery. Just out of Winterfell. In winter. It was too much to hope that it would prevent all their food problems. The lake wasn’t exceptionally large, so the supply might not last. Overfishing would certainly become a problem if they pulled too much. But if even just a handful of permanent fisheries could be set up, maybe around the Long Lake or down the White Knife…  
  
“Husband? Is everything well?”  
  
“Yes,” the man said honestly, turning to her and the children. They all had large sheets of paperboard in their hands, folded several times. “What’s this?”  
  
“This is the send-off,” Brandon said, kneeling and spreading his paperboard on his cloak, which he’d spread on the snow. The boy folded it into a hollow, four-sided shape, then laid the fifth section on top and sealed it with tallow dripped through a torch flame. It froze immediately after, leaving Brandon holding what was basically an upside-down, four-sided paper basket. Looking up from where he stood on the lake bank, Rickard noticed many similar things being handed out by the fishermen and artisans to the people, who were holding them quietly and expectant.  
  
Brandon passed the first to Ned and made another for each of the family. Then it finally came to Rickard, and Brandon turned out to have put special thought and effort into this last one. The Stark direwolf was drawn exquisitely on all four sides, its eye scratched or treated somehow to be almost transparent.  
  
Finally, Brandon signalled for Martyn to give him the last items. They were wicks. Small hemp wicks dipped in hooked, wooden thimbles filled with rapeseed oil. Brandon carefully lit them from Martyn’s torch and used crossed sticks to mount them underneath the open bottoms of the paper creels. The light filled them inside like lanterns.  
  
That’s what they were, Rickard finally realised. Lanterns.  
  
“Right then,” Brandon said, holding his own lantern aloft. “Now we wait to see if anyone starts a fire.”  
  
They waited. Quietly. Respectfully. Up until even the busiest fishermen finished casting their nets and got lanterns of their own. A deep hush fell upon everyone, deeper and softer with each new small light that winked on all around until it looked like they stood within a sea of stars. And with every moment that passed, the lantern grew lighter and lighter in Rickard’s hand.  
  
Eventually, Brandon scrutinised his wick and stuck a hand inside. “That’s should be good enough.” His son looked up at him then. He looked eerie and almost unreal in the shadows cast by orange light. “Father. Will you send us off?”  
  
A thousand thoughts and one fell together in his mind, and Rickard Stark suddenly ached to toss whatever it was away and reach for his son and embrace him with a hundred praise words on his lips. But Brandon looked so comfortable and peaceful where he was. And if they both had anything in common, it was that they prioritised what job first needed doing. So he didn’t do any of that.  
  
Rickard Stark looked at the lantern. The sun seemed to gaze at him through the direwolf’s bright and golden eye.  
  
He raised it high and let it go.  
  
And the sky lantern rose up like an ascending sun, followed by all the hundreds of others into the starry sky like golden sundrops swarmed by fireflies.


	6. My Children's Father is Simply the Worst (V)

"-. 273 AC .-"

Back in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, after the whole cock-up that forced Rickard into the thick of it instead of returning home like his father had ordered him to, Lord Edwyle Stark told his son two things. When a father gives to his son, both laugh. But when a son gives to his father, both cry.

_“And what greater thing could a son give his father than himself, sound and hale!”_

At the time, Rickard had thought the man was just covering his own arse for breaking into tears in front of everyone else. Even today Rickard held the same opinion, seeing as ‘everyone else’ included not just Rickard’s but also his father’s age-peers. Lord Steffon Baratheon of Storm’s End and Lord Jon Arryn of the Eyre. More than that, though, Rickard had immediately thought of over half a dozen things he could have given his father that would have made him do much different things than cry. Alternatively, he could have given or done things that would have made only one of them cry.

_“Hey Father!”_

As Nightmane burst out of the snowdrift onto the road proper and _finally_ managed to break into a gallop again, Lord Rickard of House Stark was hard-pressed not to snarl. He’d been on the knife’s edge of the _absolute best moment of his entire life_ , only for it to be cut short by that blowhorn-blowing, smart-mouthed little _brat!_

_“Father, over here!”_

One moment Rickard was wrapping an arm around his wife and reaching to do the same to his precious heir who’d done and given so much. The next he was grabbing at nothing. Because at some point in his mesmerised lantern watching, his son had taken advantage of everyone’s distraction to ditch him and his warden!

_“Don’t blame Cassel, it really wasn’t his fault this time!”_

Some part of Rickard Stark wondered at the strong grip Brandon had somehow established on him, to make him react like this. Make him bark parting orders, all but sprint to his mount and take off in furious pursuit while leaving everyone else gaping behind. The rest of him coiled like a spring, leaned forward in his saddle and drove his mount to the fastest speed she’d ever reached in an effort to catch up to his son and give him a piece of his mind.

_“I bet I can get back to Winterfell before you can!”_

“Hya! HYA!” The horse reared and shot forward as if launched by a scorpion. The cold bit sharply at his face. His cloak whipped in the wind. Smallfolk big and small yelped and got out of the way as fast as they could. But it wasn’t fast enough so he _did_ snarl, swerved to the side and spurred his horse forward on the very edge of the path where people were fewer. Horseshoes clak-clak-clacked as they bit into the driftbank as much as they did the hard earth and glazed frost.

He still only caught one last flash of his son’s back as he bent forward on those foot boards of his and disappeared across the hills.

For a moment, Rickard Stark actually considered trying to cut through the snow a second time. But it nearly reached Nightmane’s knees in places, so he’d doubtlessly just slow to a crawl like the first time. A problem that his son didn’t seem to have as he all but flew across the snow on those _skis_ of his.

No matter. He’d just need to circumvent him. Brandon might be able to cut straight across the hills, but whatever gain he made now would be lost soon enough. Winterfell was built atop the highest plateau between the Wolfswood and the White Knife. Unless Brandon had the agility of a grasshopper, the endurance of a direwolf, and the strength of a giant in those small arms of his, he’d be plodding uphill all five of the last miles no matter how hard he pushed with those two sticks. Ample time for an able horseman to cut him off, even by the long way along the Kingsroad. And Rickard was more than merely able. Why, if he kept up this pace he should easily reach Wintertown, cut through it, cut through Winterfell even, and come out of the North gate to _welcome_ his heir home like he deserved.

High and not so high up in the sky, the lanterns seemed to be of the same mind. Already they all but lit his path, seemingly pulled to Winterfell ever faster the further they climbed the winds on high.

Thus it was that Rickard of House Stark raced to Winterfell, grunting from the wild pace as much as from his simmering indignation at the sheer _audacity_ his blood had dared put on display. And as he did, he wondered if any among his father and grandfather and all his cousins in Essos ever had days like this.

Probably not, he mused wryly as the Wolf’s Blood failed miserably to keep its simmer under the blissful assault of every wholesome emotion conjured by this, the best day of his life. He wondered what that said about him, seeing as those newest and best feelings were wholly owed to Brandon having taken it upon himself to completely destroy their relationship. Proven to possess the wish and the will and the ability and damn the consequences. Unfortunately, the reverse side of those feelings only emerged at the _end_ of the smallfolk-frightening but otherwise uneventful gallop out of the seven hells he was still taking a long time to believe in and good grief, his thoughts were really running away from him if-

Brandon was shooting southward on the hillside right along the wall.

Rickard almost barrelled through a donkey.

Nightmane proved to have enough self-preservation to save both their necks, but it was a close thing and it jarred him like the Stepstones’ worst hangover.

… That little rat! He must have crested the last hill and come East instead of keeping a straight line! He was never going for the North Gate at all! And he wasn’t even slowing down! He was just charging and _laughing_ even though he was headed right for the largest and tallest of the snow banks and-

“Ho ho ho hOSHI-!”

Brandon shot sideways down the hill side, shot _up_ the snow bank and then literally _flew_ over Rickard’s head right as he rode past, laughing like a madman all the while before – no no NO! – he lost control of his flight, tipped backwards and crashed head-first into the snow pile on the opposite side of the gate.

“Brandon!” Rickard Stark reared Nightmane to a stop and practically jumped from the saddle. “BRANDON!” All he could see were the sticks and the boards and one of them had snapped right off his fool boy’s foot and even with the moonlight bright upon the white he _couldn’t see him anywhere_ – “Don’t just gawk there you morons, HELP ME!” The two gaping sentries snapped out of their shock and ran over to help, but they were useless! Their armored bodies sunk into the snow even more hopelessly than he did. He tried to climb up the ridiculously large snow pile – first thing he did tomorrow was having snow hills this big outlawed! – failed to get even three feet up before the snow broke under him and _there was no movement!_

“My Lord, what-!?“

“Here,” Rickard threw his cloak at the guard. Then his gauntlets. Then his bracers and - “Help me out of this! Quickly!” even his coat of plates before he kicked off his boots as well. “Be ready to pull us out!” Then he ran at and up the snow hill. It almost sunk under his weight anyway, but this time he was able to crawl all the way up to the top, where he finally saw two boots sticking out upside down. “Brandon!” The ski snapped in half when he pulled at it, but that just meant less of an obstruction for him to dig and reach down and grab at wool and leather and then _pull_.

Half-way through, the snow finally gave in and they both tumbled arse over teakettle all the way down to the ground. “Oph-Ung-UNH!” It was all Rickard could do to wrap himself around the smaller body until they came to a stop. Fortunately, the guards proved not _entirely_ useless so they didn’t tumble for long. Not so fortunately, they each wore coat of plates. Leather-packed or not, they hurt. Argh. No, not important! “Brandon!”

Beneath him, his son sputtered dazedly in a rumpled mess of ice grains and snowflakes, blinking owlishly.

“You…” He was alright. He was alright. He was alright. “You…” By the Grace of Gods in whose kindness and mercy he no longer believed in, Brandon was alright. “You MORON! No, even morons can be put to good use, if only to make people laugh at their stupidity or off sweeping the floor! An attention whore might be amusing in some way even if just by accident, plenty of ugly people are decent and respectable and better despite their ugly mugs! Hells, even the whiniest cunts can be good for something, even if they make a fuss over nothing and are annoying as a flaming fart out of a dragon’s mouth! But you, you, oh you… you… you LACKWIT!” Dimly, Rickard realised that he’d jumped to his feet at some point and was shaking his precious son back and forth by his lapels. Several feet in the air. Violently. “Never before in the history of the world have the Gods come together to create such an abysmal mistake of a mad man like you! Mad child! A mad lad! That’s what you are!”

Suspended three-some feet in the air by his tunic, Brandon Stark blinked dazedly as frost and snow rained off of him, no fear of shame or cringe anywhere in sight.

“Well? I’m talking to you, whelp! What do you have to say for yourself!?”

“…Next time I’ll _kill_ the landing.”

Rickard Stark became his own incredulous, sputtering mess. “Th-There WON”T BE A NEXT TIME!”

Which was when someone or other fell out of his cart in the background, wheezing helplessly under the onset of a sudden, inexplicable coughing fit.

… Lovely.

Withholding a sigh and pointedly _not_ looking around at the crowd of early returnees who found them a more interesting spectacle than the _hundreds of floating lights in the sky_ , Rickard Stark put his son down. Then he motioned for his boots, put on his armor and did _not_ do the same with his cloak. He used it to bundle his son up instead.

“M’not cold.”

“I don’t care.” Although he could see it was true. Despite having been buried in a week’s worth of snow, Brandon was breathless and flushed but did not shiver and showed no goosebumps at all. His skin wasn’t showing any frostbite either, although he at least wore mittens. On the other hand, Rickard had never seen him wearing more than two layers let alone a cloak, save during heavy rain. Nevertheless, he’d spoken truly that he didn’t care. Right now. “Guards. Return to your posts. And you!” Rickard barked at the commoner that couldn’t seem to stop wheezing despite how everyone else was inching away more and more by the moment. “Disperse this snow mound. I expect it to be no more than five feet tall by the time the sky lamps go out! The guards will be watching you!”

“Yes m’lord!” The man said as he climbed to his feet and panted heavily in an attempt to mask his ‘coughing’ with fatigue. Badly. “Of course, m’lord! Right away!”

Gods, he really was surrounded by idiots, wasn’t he?

Glaring down at his son, Lord Rickard of House Stark pointed at the gatehouse. “Your chambers. Now. And don’t even think to leave my sight again, do you hear me?”

But as if to prove to him and the world entire that he really _was_ born of madness, Brandon nodded in easy compliance and treated him to a look of such fond, earnest elation that it was Rickard’s turn to be left breathless this time. If not for his long ingrained aloof mannerisms, he couldn’t imagine what sight he would have made.

They entered the keep to a backdrop of moonlight, sky lights and very loud silence from the gathered crowd.

Well, _after_ Brandon stumbled, crouched to unfasten his ruined over-shoes and went around to gather up the remains of his skis. Rickard allowed it, if only because of yet more surprise that needed settling. Those reverse clasps seemed terribly convenient. Could they be applied to anything else?

Speculation and considerations only flowed freely from there. Chiefly around the skis themselves. For all that he’d scared ten years off his life, Brandon had just proven they could make a man match horsemen in full gallop. At least under the right circumstances. It remained to be seen what the full breadth of those right circumstances were, but Rickard could already see them in use when horses _couldn’t_. A bad enough blizzard could close passes and roads for many moons, to say nothing of how snow made the bulk of the Northern plains and hills all but impassable to men and horse alike once it piled high enough. Which always happened by the third moon of winter. Then there was how Brandon _and_ Martyn had come to the fair via same means. If skis worked for full-grown men as well as they did for light-bodied boys of ten…

The walk to Brandon’s rooms was one of deep thought. About scouting, hunting, force projection and cross-country travel through the entire winter season. Maybe with the occasional forward outpost here and there. A snow hut every dozen miles perhaps?

He could already see a network appearing atop the map of the Northern Kingdom deep in his mind’s eye.


	7. My Children's Father is Simply the Worst (VI)

**“-. 273 AC .-“**

Once they reached their destination, Rickard cajoled Brandon to go change. Made it a command when the boy said that he ‘wasn’t all that cold, honest.’ Cold or not, Brandon was wet after the frost and snow melted on the walk over. He wasn’t quite soaked, but it was close. Rickard himself had been feeling the bite before the natural Winterfell warmth seeped into him. And his proper winter clothing had shaken off most of the snow before that, instead of it getting everywhere. “I don’t know or care what bestowed this grit against the cold on you. Now get going.”

“It’s just breathing and exposure,” Brandon muttered, but went to his closet to change.

Rickard took the time to stoke and fuel the fire in the hearth. Fortunately, the servants had been diligent in keeping it so it didn’t take long. He then lit a few candles and got acquainted with the place for what was practically the first time. Brandon’s chambers could be mistaken for a Maester’s. The desk was covered with papers small and big. There were stacks of sheets piled along the walls. All but one of those walls – the one with the window – were covered in bookshelves stuffed to bursting. Though most of them weren’t even loaded with actual tomes, but spring and ring books one after another.

Rickard didn’t go rifling through them. But he did move closer to the desk to see what Brandon had last been working on. There seemed to be a whole stack of drawings. That was what finally made him give in to the urge to pick through them. Once he brought them close to the candlelight, the quality surprised him. It wasn’t exceptional but it was still fairly good. The variety surprised him more. Portraits, landscapes, tools, geometry, even shapeless forms with no seeming purpose. Then there was what appeared to be the newest project being worked on. It turned out to be a sketch of… a barrel mounted sideways on a cart? Except two of the wheels were mounted at the front and back of the barrel, rather than the cart itself.

“I guess now you know why I had to reverse-engineer paper…” Brandon said from behind. Awkwardly. “I went through so much that my allowance didn’t cover it even after mother doubled it. Not on top of everything else. Then I kept running out, and no amount of coin was going to make ships any faster.”

Rickard had already suspected as much. Even spread across years, Brandon’s various enterprises were a bit too extensive for the typical Stark heir’s allowance. They only seemed poised to expand too, perhaps beyond what even his more successful investments could cover. Within a reasonable time frame at least. The latest drawing kept pulling at him though. The barrel had some strange attachments, and a sifter underneath it all for some reason. At least that’s what he guessed. The sketch seemed unfinished. Barely even half done really. Much of the large paper was entirely bare as well, as if waiting for something else to be added. Below was what Rickard assumed to be the name, but it was done in wholly unfamiliar characters. His heart sunk a little at the sight. Brandon should have regained his words, was that not true? Could he not write? But it couldn’t be, could it? Not with the games his children played. Not if he taught them letters.

“… Father, I-“

“I was going to murder you.” Rickard spoke the words calmly. Levelly. Because if he forced Brandon even _now_ to bridge the void between them, it would mean his final, total failure as a father and as a man. “The last time I was here, long ago. It wasn’t because I missed you. Wanted to hold you. Or because Lyarra was growing spent being the only one caring for you. Though all were true. No, it was so you could _tragically drown_ in the bath.”

Dead silence.

“You were weak. Broken. The fever had taken your senses and your words. All signs showed you to be a lackwit. And your moodswings promised a life cut short or, worse, one of long hardship as you grew in body but never developed in mind at all. I couldn’t bear the thought of you leading that unlife.”

The quiet stretched. Like the gravelike silence deep in the Crypt of Winterfell.

“I was going to murder you. Even as I saw you could still recognize me, I was going to murder you. As your face twisted with the effort to stay aware of your surroundings, I grew more certain that it would be a mercy. And as you tried and failed to walk to the bath on your own, I took it as more reason to strengthen my resolve. Then I lifted you. Placed you into the water. You were so _light_. It would have been so easy. I had your head in hand, my other on your chest ready to push you down… Then my hands touched the water.” Rickard placed the papers back down on the desk. “The lye soap stung my palms. The gouges from where I’d clenched my fists so hard that my nails had torn my skin inside and out. Then you started cleaning the cuts, slowly and clumsily but so kind and careful and I just… I couldn’t do it.”

The winter winds batted and whistled outside, but even they seemed muted.

“For months I was certain I’d condemned you to a hellish caricature of living. I couldn’t bear the sight or even the thought of what you were going through because of my _weakness._ I pushed you away. That was my second mistake. Cassel was the third. I decided there wouldn’t be a fourth, so I cut you off entirely lest I just make it worse. Put you wholly in the care of your guardsman and your mother. Perhaps I was just deluding myself and that was the biggest mistake all along.” Rickard sighed. “But then you just… seemed to thrive more and more the further we stayed apart.” Even now it seemed that way. Although it may just be him overreacting to his failures again.

Brandon didn’t say anything. It was almost as if he weren’t in the room anymore at all.

“Well, now you know,” Rickard said, at last turning to face his son again. “This _thing_ between us. This is it.”

Brandon was standing in the middle of the room, arm raised and finger pointed while gaping at him stupidly.

All at once it dawned on Rickard just what he’d done. And how. And _when_. He reached up to rub his face, grunting in irritation. At this situation. At himself. “I am sorry son, it seems I can’t even stop myself from ruining the day of your greatest achievement.” With a final sigh, the man let his hand drop back at his side. “I shouldn’t have done this today.” His other hand made an aborted move towards his son, but it too fell back. He turned to leave instead. “I’ll let you rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

“Don’t you fucking dare!”

Rickard stopped and reached back abruptly. He barely made it in time to stop Brandon from falling face-first into his backside. His son had tried to stop him by his tunic only to be yanked forward instead. He was so light, even now.

The man turned to face him again. “Or we can talk more now. That’s alright too.”

“Like fuck this is alright!” Brandon pulled harshly out of his grip and stepped back, shaking with angry tension.

Rickard stood and watched as his son stomped to his desk, took his key from a drawer, stormed over to the door, locked it, then stomped over to the other end of the room and viciously threw the key into his closet space.

“Are you kidding me old man!?” Brandon howled as he whirled on him. Shrieked really. His voice hadn’t broken yet. “You come and dump this on me now? I thought you might hate me. I thought something was wrong with me. I THOUGHT YOU THOUGHT I WAS A DEMON!”

“What!?” Rickard balked, aghast. “Never!”

“ _Now_ you tell me! Gods!” Brandon leaned against his bedside with a groan. “Here I thought _I_ was the idiot. If today didn’t work, I was ready to force a confrontation to see if I was wrong about you _not_ being a stone’s throw away from becoming a child-beater.” What!? “At least then I’d know where you fell off the fence! But now you come here and just dump this on me? And you come out with it when I’m so exhausted and sleep deprived that I can’t even give you the proper what for! This is bullshit! All this time I thought the world was keeping my dad away from me through some big hardship! But now it turns out you were just too busy being dramatic!?”

“Brandon-“

“Oh, this is just great!”

“Brandon-“

“You’re just the _worst_.”

“Bran-“

“I’ve been Baelished!”

He’s been what now?

“Dammit, Dad!”

“Son-“

“I HOPED AT LEAST ONE OF US WOULD STILL HAVE SOMETHING RESEMBLING A MORAL HIGH GROUND!”

The walls should have shaken with the howl. And yes, this time it was a proper howl. Loud and mighty and dripping desperation. It sent Brandon grabbing at his throat in pain. It made Rickard want to scoop his son up as if he were still much younger than ten name days.

Brandon faltered. His anger seemed to drain as fast as it erupted. He dithered, then he climbed to sit on the edge of the bed, hunching on himself and looking miserable.

Rickard slowly pulled the chair from the desk and sat down, watching his son carefully. He waited for some time. Then some time more. Brandon made as if to say something a few times, but the words seemed stuck in his throat.

“So…” Rickard said, trying to help him over whatever obstacle it was. Not that he found it all that much easier to break this particular ice wall. In the end, he just latched onto what had recently stuck out most. “Baelished?”

“Ugh,” Brandon grunted, falling back on the bed. “Don’t even get me started on that one.”

“Alright.”

“Oh for-it means ‘I’m screwed’ okay?” The boy pushed his palms into his eyes in frustration. “Whenever I try to picture what House Stark’s ultimate nemesis might be, it’s always a small, skinny, green-eyed arsehole with a dark pointed beard who’s constantly selling us out and then laughing at our stupidity. Laughing at us. Laughing at _me_.”

… Where was he even supposed to start? And come to think of it, hadn’t he come across something like that in the Book of Names?

The awkward silence returned.

“Son-“

“Executing Rodrik was justified.” Brandon cut him off, because this also seemed the day to find out the many ways in which they were alike.

For a moment, Rickard Stark couldn’t comprehend what he’d just heard. “What did you just say?”

“Rodrik was full of shit!” Brandon snarled, jumping back off the bed and pacing around like a caged animal. His anger returned even faster than it’d doused. Then the whole story came spilling out. “‘I’ve been assigned to serve you, Little Lord. I’m your faithful guardian, Young Lord. You’ve had another episode, Little Wolf. You’re giving me the runaround, Wild Wolf. My Lord, you didn’t really think I didn’t see this coming with how often you mutter and mumble and growl sinisterly without realising who else is in the room, did you?’ He knew where I was the entire time! When I tried to sneak out – ha! – he was right there waiting for me. He’d seen it coming weeks ahead! But instead of keeping me out of trouble – like you _ordered_ him to – he decided to bet everything on my grand ‘plan’ instead! He disobeyed you. He _covered_ for me. The only reason he even went around ‘looking’ for me was because I ordered him, and even then he only used it as cover for _me_ instead of him like I meant it to! Made sure to always be looking in the wrong place! And then he had the nerve to keep it all to himself all the way to the chopping block! Even though I _also_ ordered him in advance not to! So much for vaunted knightly honor. So much for justice! What do they matter? What does _he_ matter? As if I had any honor or _sense_ to speak of that could outweigh even a thousandth of all that! What does an eternity of nothingness matter when you’ve up and decided that your scatter-brained, inconsiderate, rambling _lackwit_ of a charge is Bran the Builder Reborn?”

_Aren’t you?_ But the thought was buried under another. It turned out that even at his own son’s expense he could experience vindication, Rickard thought emptily.

“And the servants, sheep-brained _morons_ all of them, bought hook line and sinker into my ‘master’ plan! Because why the fuck should anyone spend three fucking seconds wondering how the fuck I supposedly evaded my personal guard and Winterfell’s whole guard force? Never mind that I was five fucking years old. Nevermind that I did it for half a day. Nevermind that I was still _insane!_ And how in all the hells that don’t exist did nobody think to ask why Cassel didn’t just get a few dogs to sniff me out if he was really so desperate to find me!?”

Well. It seemed that _great_ minds weren’t the only ones that could think alike. Though Rickard could easily admit he hadn’t bothered looking this much into it at the time. He knew the man and his competence so he did not need to pick at any finer details when he decided he had been deliberately derelict rather than neglectful. And neglect would have demanded censure regardless, at the very least. This even counting Rickard’s already plentiful personal history of bad decisions, such that he had less trouble believing that people could lapse into such incompetence. By comparison, Lyarra _did_ pick at the finer details. Then she decided Cassel had acted maliciously _precisely_ because he did not get one of the kennel master’s dogs to sniff Brandon out. Also, he didn’t get someone else or even notify Rickard to help find him, which said further bad things.

His wife had been very… _definitive_ in the short time leading up to the sentence. Had she not talked about it with Brandon at all?

“But that doesn’t matter, does it?” Brandon said, oblivious to his thoughts. The boy had his back to him now. Like he couldn’t face him. His voice cracked as he spoke, spent and... and almost tearful. “ _I_ knew. But didn’t say anything.”

No, this he would not abide. “You were insensate for over a day.”

“And I didn’t say anything even after that!” Brandon whirled on him, shaking with anger. At him. At his protector. At the ending. At himself. “I didn’t snuff the rumors. And then I went and basically threw mud in your face by apologising to Martyn in public with you right there. I usurped your authority. After I lied. I _betrayed you._ ”

Rickard beheld his son, then slowly cradled his brow and sighed. “You were a hurt child, lashing out in hopes that others would hurt as well.”

“No, _you_ of all people don’t get make excuses for me!” The boy said tightly. “I had no place. I had no right. I didn’t even have _justification_. I was angry. It wasn’t even you I was most angry at, but I was angry and you were the only target left and I wanted _revenge_.”

Sitting there and beholding his angry, shaking, grief-stricken son, Lord Rickard of House Stark wondered how, exactly, Brandon thought any of this was going to make him think less than the world of him after everything that happened since.

He must have taken too long marvelling. “Dad…” Brandon’s voice was even more stricken now, if that was possible. “Dad, please say something.”

“Will you just lash out at me again like you did just now?”

The boy looked sincerely ashamed. “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “I’m… I…” He struggled with something, unable or unwilling to say whatever it- “I don’t know what I am.”

Strong and brave and too precocious by half, Rickard wanted to say. Blameless, he wanted to say. _You don’t get the same blame. You’re a child. Who expects good judgment from a child?_ But he doubted that absolution was what Brandon was looking for. A dark part of Rickard wondered if it was bravery or if the brainstorm just broke something in him, but he promptly beat it down. He also decided not to poke the latest wound revealed. There was another that needed to be drained first. One he happened to share. “Was it worth it?”

Brandon looked thrown. “What?”

“The Godswood. The mushrooms. The Heart Tree.” Even now he could barely prevent his rancor from seeping into his tone. Bot for Brandon, he would manage it. “Whatever you went there for. Did it do what it was supposed to?”

“… Yes-no-I don’t know!” The boy trembled in place before starting to pace restlessly again. “I was depressed – _soul-weary_. The ps- _magic_ mushrooms were supposed to help with that – they did! – but the headaches kept coming back. I’ve had better success with bloody _passionflowers_. And what am I even supposed to say about the Heart Tree now? That the only reason I even went there was to see it _glow_? Congratulations, oh Brandon of House Stark! You’ve accomplished your grand plan and a good man died for it. Welcome to Westeros. Have a nice life!”

“Oh son,” Rickard said sadly, finally unable to hold back this one, all-important question. “What did the Gods do to you?”

Shockingly, Brandon snorted. “The Gods didn’t do shit. It’s my fault for being a lunk. Three whole years of living and it took seeing the bloody face on the tree to finally realise where I was. Bran the lunk, thick as a castle wall and slow as an aurochs-”

His boy stopped talking abruptly, but even so it was all Rickard could do not to feel adrift at the sudden, off-handed dismissal of his greatest source of spite and misery. It was all he could do not to be blown away by the bizarre and incomprehensible implications of that outburst. He forced them down eventually. Down with everything else when Brandon continued _failing_ to finish what he was about to say. “Son?” Rickard stood from the seat and stepped closer, reaching out tentatively. “Brandon?”

The boy didn’t seem to hear him, even as he slowly raised his clenched fists and visibly coiled with tension.

Alarmed, the man quickly stepped in front of him, only to be faced with a sight that, quite frankly, scared the hells out of him. Brandon was tense, his eyes squinted fixed on nothing, and his thinned lips were twisting into a grimace of… of _pain_ almost, as if he were waging some internal war with ghosts or visions. Oh Gods, what even was happening? What more could the Gods inflict on his boy now? “Brandon!” Rickard shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders.

The boy snapped out of whatever it was, looked almost shocked to see him, then a look of sheer terror stole over his face. He gasped, lurched back from his grasp, smacked into the bed hard enough to almost fall of his feet, then lunged wildly across the room, all but crawling the last few steps to the closet and the cloak that was still piled on the ground at the foot of the door. Small hands dug and pulled at it until they found a pocket, from which they pulled a… a…

“This is a…,” Brandon said with a rattling breath, falling to his knees and hunching over it like… like he’d done earlier that evening after the trebuchet fiasco, Rickard recalled faintly. “A _toothbrush!_ ” Rickard felt horror curl in his belly when Brandon said that made-up word as if he’d almost forgotten it. “This is a toothbrush. There were none like it. I made it. I _will_ make more of it. But this one is mine. Its length is one and half the spans of a full grown man’s hand. Its body is made of ox bone. The ox bone was sanded. Then it was burn-finished. Its head is made with horsetail. There are eight and twenty tufts. Each bestowed fifty hairs. A total of four and ten hundred bristles exactly.” As he spoke, Brandon brushed faintly trembling fingertips over each part he named.

Rickard moved to stand over him and reached forward, but did not dare touch him. Brandon’s eyes were open but unseeing, for all the attention he paid him. Which was _none_ of it.

“Today is the three hundred five and fiftieth day of its existence,” Brandon said, less shakily now. Somehow. “It has been used seven hundred and ten times. Twelve hairs from the top left-most tuft have fallen in that time. Along with three from the third left tuft. Four from the bottom right. Two from the right middle. And…” Brandon looked at the fingers on his other hand. “One from the bottom right. The bristles lost now number eight and twenty. The total bristles now stands at thirteen hundred two and seventy.” Brandon then abruptly took a long breath deep from the bottom of his belly that filled him all the way to the top of his throat, before he suddenly released it. Or part of it. Then he pulled air inward again, deep and harsh like he’d been drowning and just come up for air. Then again. And again and again thirty different times before he exhaled one more time and stopped breathing entirely. For over a hundred heartbeats and ten, he didn’t breathe at all. Or move. Or do anything else.

Rickard counted them. The heartbeats. They pounded in his chest and his throat and his temples with all the weight of terror he’d never felt for anyone else save his parents just before sickness took them. Please, Gods, don’t take his son as well!

Brandon abruptly pulled a deep breath and kept it for five and ten beats before releasing it. Then the frightening, unnatural… _thing_ repeated itself a second time. Thirty times plus one exhale longer than all of them combined. As he did, the boy let himself sink to his back on the floor and lay still and silent and eyes closed and didn’t breathe for twice as long as the first time when he was done. And on the third, he breathed in and out right where he lay thirty times spread over almost quarter of an hour. Then he just… lay there. Loose and motionless for so long that Rickard literally thought he’d breathed his last.

“Son!” The man seized his shoulders and shook him, panicked and distraught. Brandon snapped his eyes open and stared at him. Then his face sank with dismay. At everything. Nothing. Himself. Some terrible failure. Rickard recognised it because it looked exactly the same on himself. “Son, what-?“

Brandon lurched to his feet suddenly. He swayed. Rickard almost didn’t react fast enough to steady him, such was his distress. The boy then staggered vaguely towards his desk, almost knocked over the lit candlestick if not for Rickard grabbing it, and then rifled through papers and tools and drawers for… something even he didn’t seem to know. Eventually, the boy stopped at one of the smaller paper leafs with the vague beginnings of a sketch or other drawn on it. Set it down. Then he just… stood there staring at it. The fire from the candle and the hearth cast sinister lines and shades around his eyes.

Rickard realised with all-new mounting alarm that Brandon _still_ hadn’t taken a breath since the last time.

“… Shit,” Brandon whispered.

“… Son, please,” Rickard pled outright. “I don’t understand.”

“Shit…” The boy whispered shakily, a dark terrible secret looming in the shadowy silence of the room. “Dad, I…” Brandon finally, _finally_ took a slow, unsteady breath that seemed to go on forever and a day. “This is… _should be_ a…” His face scrunched again with that horrifying mix of distress and a man fighting to catch some unseen ghost in the dark. “A _blast furnace_.” A what? “But I barely remember the outline.” Remember? From where? What has that Maester been letting him read!? And Brandon’s voice was growing so unsteady and miserable! “And this second part, I… When I started I could barely remember what it was supposed to look like. But by the end of it I couldn’t even remember what it’s called! I still don’t. Fuck, before I saw it just now I didn’t even remember _drawing_ this. I’d forgotten it was even a _thing_.”

… Good Gods, had his son just told him he was losing sense like an old dotard!? No, it couldn’t be true. “Brandon, what are you saying?”

“… I’m regressing.”

The words rung like a heavy funeral dirge. The deep, brass bell of a dark, terrible truth spoken aloud for the first time.

“Dad, look,” Brandon turned pleading eyes on him. As if he’d done something wrong. As if he’d done _anything_ wrong. “I know I’m not making sense-but I can fix this! I know how. I _know_ I can-!”

“What do you need?”

The boy looked as if he’d just been blown out to sea in a thunderstorm.

“Brandon,” Rickard laid his hands on his son’s shoulders and gazed with all the intensity of a man who’d just been promised an end to every last one of his hardships at once. “Tell me what you need.”

“Wh… Just like that!?”

“Yes.”

The boy gaped just as stupidly as the first time, but twice as astounded. And also the ugliest bit _infuriated_. “You… After all this time-“

“No _tangents_ , son!” Rickard barked before the boy could lapse into another episode of whatever it was that was… that was eating at his wits even now. “Whatever this is, it’s _hurting_ you. _Stop thinking about it_. Please, just stop. Just tell me what you need.”

“Just like that?” Brandon said in disbelief. “You’re just going to believe me?”

He hadn’t even said what he was supposed to believe! “Son, you’ve just set half a dozen new traditions, you’re teaching sense to Lyanna and you can make thing _fly_. I firmly believe you can do _anything_.”

Brandon looked at him with eyes suddenly glassy, as if… Rickard didn’t even know how to- “That... that is just bullshit!” Brandon railed at… he didn’t even know anymore. Neither of them seemed to. “I’m a dumbass. _Demented at ten namedays_ , completely certifiable - my judgment isn’t worth shit! Y-you expect me to think you’ll just buy whatever I’m peddling before I even say it!? You-you…“ Brandon’s voice cracked worse than all the other times combined and his eyes welled with tears. Of pain and anger and grief and _frustration_. “ _Fuck_ you, Dad, you bastard!”

“Oh Brandon…”

Brandon choked back a sob and glared at him with moist eyes. Some bitter, foul, cursing reply was on the tip of his tongue, he could see it clear as day. He braced himself to receive it. It would be the least he- “You couldn’t have done this years ago!?”

“Oh you fool-begotten boy…” Rickard fell to his knees and pulled him close. Embraced him. Enveloped his son in his arms like he well _should_ have done years ago. He thought Brandon would lash out at him. Struggle against him. Spit and curse and claw and Gods only knew what else. But he didn’t. His son just collapsed and sagged into him completely, breaking into the most painful, most wretched, most frightened, bitter tears Rickard had ever witnessed in his entire life. The man held his son even tighter, one hand pulling his head against his heart and the other arm secure around the rest of him. The boy grabbed at his tunic. Gripped it tight. Rickard rested his chin on top of his head then. Breathed his son’s scent in. His son’s hair was strong, abundant and dark like his, but smooth as silk and smelling of apple cider. Even at his most woeful, his son gave out that same, fastidious industriousness that had the whole fair muttering and whispering by the end, about Brandon the Bright in whom were wonder-making wolf kings born again.

Foolish notions spawned by dreams of even more foolish peasants, but if it was Brandon, he’d allow them. After all, when it came to his boy, Rickard could finally admit he wasn’t much different from them.

Rickard Stark held his son until he cried himself out. Then he stayed where he was and just held him some more. The candles all burned low. The fire in the hearth blazed and crackled and ate itself up until it too was almost gone. Like so much time. So much time gone like ash and dust in the wind.

When Brandon had spent every last of his sobs, sniffs and whimpers, Rickard climbed to his feet with him still in his arms and walked to the bed. Set him down. Carefully. As tenderly as he could. “Wait here.” He headed for the closet, paused mid-way and turned back around. “I’m not leaving.” Then he retrieved the key and went to open the door.

As he’d hoped, Martyn was on the other side, standing guard.

Rickard ignored the man’s failed attempt to hide his concern – and other emotions – and called for some food, fresh nightwear for himself and more wood for the fire. Conveniently, the man already had the latter ready. Rickard allowed him to bring it in. He also accepted the tray of food Cassel also conveniently had at the ready before sending him on his way. Rickard used the time to Cassel’s return to see to his son’s feeding, though in truth Brandon didn’t put up any resistance. Once Rickard was assured he could feed himself, he watched him from the corner of his eye while he stoked the dying embers in the hearth. For all that he’d cried himself nearly sick to the stomach, the boy ate every last bite and didn’t leave out even one drop of the warm milk besides. Wiped the plate clean with some bread core even. The man made a mental note to inquire as to whether Brandon was eating enough. He didn’t _seem_ underfed but he should also have hit his growth spurt by now. When Cassel came back with his change of clothes, Rickard somehow still expected Brandon to make a fuss once he realized what he was planning. He really was a fool, Rickard thought, upon seeing the light come back inside his son. But then, why would Brandon care that he had every right to resent him and raise every last bother?

He was a little boy who wanted his father.

Rickard went in and out of the closet to change. Then he went around putting out the candles and climbed into bed next to Brandon, who’d scooted back and was watching uncertainly. He laid on his side facing the lad, one arm out over the pillows while he held the covers up with the other. Brandon slowly but unhesitatingly accepted the invitation, crawling into the warmth and resting his temple in the crook of Rickard’s elbow. The man settled the covers over the both of them and laid his hand on the side of his son’s face, stroking it gently chin to temple. “Tell me what you need, my son. Tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you. Tell me what you want and I’ll see what I can do about that too. Tell me what you wish for and I’ll know what lengths I have to go.”

It was the height of hypocrisy for _him_ of all people to say that, but his son seemed to draw strength from it.

Brandon was in his shadow now, yet his grey eyes glinted all the more brightly because of that. “I wish…” He was going to answer in reverse then? That was fine too. “I wish I could have had this all this time.” Rickard’s heart clenched, but it was an old pain. “I want you to make it up to me.” It twinged again, but this was something to which he’d already resolved himself. “Just tonight won’t be enough, you know. You owe me, Dad. Seven years you owe me. I want my seven years.”

“Alright.”

“I won’t make it easy,” Brandon said thickly, looking down at his chin. “I _won’t_. Not anymore. I have standards. I want a father who’s strong. I want you to be brave. I want you to _talk to me_. Fit me me into your company as much as humanly possible. In fact, I want it to the point where me and the others start competing for your attention.”

“You’ll have it.” As if any of that could ever be _any_ hardship at all.

“And I want your promise that you’ll grant me one request when I ask.”

Rickard blinked slowly at the boy who no longer felt up to meeting his scrutiny. “And what request is that?”

“I don’t have one _now_. Even if I did, I wouldn’t want you to just do it. I’m ten. My judgment’s worth jack shit.”

“But worth enough to humor my young son’s attempt at extortion?”

“Er… yes?”

Gods, it was like his son wanted him to burst from pride in him with every word that came out of his mouth. He was thinking so far ahead already! That being said… “I make no blind promises. But I _will_ give the request its due consideration when you make it.”

Brandon glanced at him. Only briefly though. “It’s more than I expected you’d say.”

“The honor is entirely yours, I’m sure,” Rickard said dryly, masking his true feelings with practiced difficulty. “Now tell me what you need.”

“A bag of weirwood seeds, a bag of inner shavings from _roots_ of a weirwood tree, and a week out in the middle of nowhere.”

Lord Rickard of House Stark wondered if he was going mad all of a sudden. He could have sworn he just heard his son – who’d just a short while ago dismissed off-hand all of his father’s beliefs that the Gods had been tormenting him for whatever reason – claim that his cure and salvation lied with those same Gods.

Brandon was completely oblivious to his father’s religious crisis. “No one else should know. Especially not _Walys_ ,” he all but growled the last name. “I don’t trust him. I couldn’t even tell you why.”

Rickard Stark stared at his strange, preposterous, incredible, exasperating son.

“… I really do sound crazy, don’t I?” Brandon said miserably. “Why shouldn’t it take a bit of blasphemy?”

“That’s it?” Rickard stared at Brandon, who blinked up at him all taken aback at his incredulity. “No weird mushrooms? No special books? Potions? Some year-long research at the Citadel? You don’t need me to send someone buying exotic goods from the Summer Isles or looking for obscure lore in Asshai? Anything?” The Rose would probably do it too if he asked them when the goal was something like this, even if it wasn’t exactly part of the big one.

“…No?” Brandon was looking at him funnily. “Maybe another sack of passionflower seeds? I’ve been running out.”

“What even are those-you said they help with headaches? Doesn’t the Maester have something for that?”

“I don’t trust him,” Brandon muttered sullenly. Again. “He’s shady. And they’re no good anyway. They make me feel tired all the time or make my head feel like it’s stuffed with wool. At least passionflower lets me _see_ things, even if mushrooms are better.”

“… Alright,” Rickard sighed eventually, pulling Brandon closer and tucking him under his chin. “Alright. We’ll see what we can do. Tomorrow.”

“…Tomorrow.”

They both quieted, and Rickard felt like there was finally peace, real peace, between them two.

“Dad?”

And his son called him Dad the _more_ on edge he was. He tucked him closer. “Yes, son. I’m here.”

“There’s something else.”

“Yes?”

“That warehouse. The one with the mold, you know the one?”

“Yes.”

“In case this doesn’t work-“

“It will.”

“No, Dad, _listen_ ,” Brandon outright pled, shaky and fearful. “This is _important_. That mold – the spores, it’s been contaminated but _it’s the one_. It killed all the others, it has to be. We need it. A lot of it. And an alchemist, even if I fix myself I might not remember how to process it but we have to. No matter how many steps, no matter how long it takes, we have to.”

“Son-“

“Dad, it can _kill the plague!_ ” Brandon hissed and brought a hand to his forehead, but for all the pain on his face he looked victorious in that one moment. “It can kill almost any sickness.” Then he sagged and closed his eyes, sad and wistful. “It would have saved grandma and grandpa.”

Rickard Stark’s mind went blank. He didn’t know for how long. The fire crackled in the heart to their back. The windowpane glinted in the firelight. Light danced and scattered amidst shadows along the wall. Still his thoughts remained jumbled. Rudderless. Completely.

“…Dad?”

“…We’ll start tomorrow,” Rickard finally said, savagely crushing every last inkling and feeling that claim had conjured up. “Tomorrow.”

“Alright…” the boy said uncertainly, realising perhaps some of what his words may have done. But for all that, he still reached up. Tentatively. Curled his small, uncallused fingers in his father’s beard like he used to, so long ago before life had turned crooked and terrible. “Is this alright?”

“It is, son.” Rickard said, finally wrapping his son in a full embrace. He curled his fingers through Brandon’s hair. “It’s alright now. Whatever isn’t I’ll _make_ alright. And if I can’t, we’ll learn and plot and ride and fight until it is.”

“It sounds like a dream,” Brandon said drowsily. “I don’t know shit about riding though.” Rickard’s heart skipped a beat. “Or bows. Or swords. Or anything like that really. So there’s that.”

Rickard blinked incredulously. “Excuse you?

“… You’re not going to disown me, are you?”

“ _Brandon_.” He forced his son to face him because… this was… “My son? Sub-par in any of the lordly disciplines? _My_ son? Impossible. Who’s been teaching you?”

“No one.”

Rickard wasn’t sure what he’d just heard. “Excuse me?”

“I told mother I didn’t want to learn any of it. She’s never been able to deny me anything.”

“Son, what…” Rickard Stark felt a thick lump of dismay lodge in his throat. “Why would you ever do such a thing?”

“… Because I want to learn that from you.”

It was all the man could do not to crush the boy in his arms, such was the strength of the reaction he had to contain. It felt like madness, sadness and happiness all in one. Like grief knocking on the door seeking to drag them back.

He really should have expected this, bitter and sweet and as much dreadful as peaceful outcome. His father had once told him it’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. But he never said how hard it would be to repair broken children. He’d never taught him how to deal with the guilt and shame from _being_ the broken man either. Let alone the sort that needed his own broken child to come fix him before he could finally do his damn job and fix _him_ when he needed to.

Rickard Stark stayed awake long after his son fell asleep. Holding him. Watching him. Listening to him breathe. Pondering idly the many ways in which he and his son were the same. Like how Brandon was every bit as dramatic as he claimed _he_ was. Why else would he fret over the smallest things and misread the big ones? The mold would be simple enough. It could just grow in a cellar instead of the surface where everything froze so solidly. Brandon probably hadn’t found anyone willing to indulge him. Cellars were few and private. No one had room to spare in their only means of keeping perishables and _thawing_ food once Winter came around.

Plague and mold absurdities aside, none of his other so-called challenges were all that complicated either. Time out in the wilderness? Easy to set up even before he provided so many new potential solutions for getting around. Passionflower? The Ryswells had a daughter enamored with them. They probably had a cartload of seeds to spare. He’d send a raven in the morning. As for the so-called blasphemy issue, that was actually the easiest. Come morning or the day after, they’ll just rope Benjen into leading them on a treasure hunt. Shouldn’t be hard to make him think it was all his idea. If the digging just _happened_ to chop off some roots and no one realized their true nature until the very end, well, that couldn’t be helped. All that dirt, you see. And the shade is always so deep under unbroken canopies. The Gods surely wouldn’t mind if it meant a child’s smile, and Benjen was ever so charming without even trying.

Of course it may strain belief after the third time it happens, but blasphemy? Ha! Even if the guards or smallfolk muttered, let them. It was the gods that did this, they may as well suffer the consequences. Maybe even Brandon, broken as he was, understood enough to know who was to blame for what he’d been reduced to. Even if he denied it before both gods and men.

The light of man soared through the sky outside deep through the night.

It felt like an omen.


	8. Pay for Divided Loyalties Is Utter Shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've moved the SI interludes to their own separate story. You can find it in the companion piece.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/26988031/chapters/65876560

“-. 273 AC .-“

Most days, Martyn Cassel understood well enough why his brother laid everything down for the Young Lord. On some of them, he even figured he caught a glimpse of whatever it was that made Rodrik do that when the boy was just five name days old. It was never enough to relieve his misgivings. Much as he hated to think about it, his brother had _vastly_ overstepped his authority and been derelict in his sworn duty. Still, it was what it was, and the Fair had just taken a spot at the outmost top of the knight’s regard.

But then there were times when his charge went and did something so out of nowehere that the knight was hard-pressed not to dream about a simpler life where their family had never been ennobled at all.

“Martyn’s known about Rodrik all along!” Brandon Stark blurted on seeing him, when he and Lord Stark finally emerged from his chambers the morning after. “I told him before I would let mother take him on. I thought it would change his mind about wanting to take up where Rodrik left off but, well… Shit, I can’t believe I forgot about that! I even _told_ him I’d tell you, but I forgot. For five years. Fuck.”

Rickard Stark came to a dead stop and looked between them both with _visible_ disbelief. Then he pointed the way he came. “… Inside. Both of you. Now.”

They went.

Once in Lord Brandon’s rooms, Rickard Stark glared at them both. “This. Is not. Acceptable.”

“This is my fault,” the Young Lord groaned, his face sunk into both hands dramatically. “I’m sorry, father, I’m an idiot.”

Lord Rickard Stark pinched his nosebridge with all the stress of a man suffering every last _opposite_ problem that came with fatherhood. “Son. Five name days you was an idiot. _You_ are not.” Dropping his hand, the Lord then glared at Martyn outright. “But you. I don’t know _what_ you are. Completely disinterested in doing right by the brother whose wishes you claim to be holding up? Did you never even once follow up on my son’s guarantees? Or are you such a fool that it never occurred to you that perhaps wisdom would dictate _not_ indulging the judgment of a stripling not even half grown. To say nothing of the tragedy of errors that had resulted from it already!” Lord Stark’s countenance turned frighteningly cold then. “Or perhaps you kept silent out of spite in a bid to pretend you still had grounds for your misgivings against me. Have I been entrusting my son’s safety to a man with divided loyalties all this time?”

“Mr Lord!” Martyn Cassel took a knee, drew his sword and offered it up by the blade. “I swear to you my vows are true. My loyalty has ever been to House Stark and the Young Lord.”

“But not _me_.”

“You _are_ House Stark, now and until your death.”

Martyn didn’t know how long he knelt there, feeling like a sword’s edge was pressing down the back of his neck. The worst part was that he wasn’t sure _what_ all had led to this, exactly. At first he’d assumed the discussion had happened without the Lords deeming him worth following up with. When he eventually realized otherwise, he just… thought the Young Lord was putting it off because of everything else he had going on. Like he didn’t think it was all that important anymore. Martyn himself had eventually come to think the same.

“Gods, you Cassels really _are_ all fools. Get up.”

Martyn Cassel obeyed, re-sheathed his blade and tried not to show the dread he felt within.

Rickard Stark showed no such restraint in his affront. Or his disappointment. “You have kept critical things from me. Seemingly with no malice aforethought, but this speaks even more in your disfavour.” The Lord sighed and rubbed shortly at his temple. “It’s things like this that have me convinced knighthood is a shit institution. It’s like the oaths you swear completely drain your brains out through your ears. Why my forebears ever let that Andal tripe seep into the North is beyond me. Especially when we already have masters.”

Martyn Cassel was hard-pressed not to gape at the sudden forthright turn that his stern and unreadable lord had suddenly taken. Admittedly, he _had_ just witnessed Lord Stark become ten times as sanguine as he used to be over a single day just from spending time with his heir. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to have undone any of the Lord’s increasingly harrowing skill at making you feel like an utter imbecile.

“Well? Do you have nothing to say in your defence?”

“… My loyalty and service are and always have been yours, My Lord.”

“How unfortunate that I cannot believe you, seeing as you have such a keen secret-keeping ability but completely lack the judgment to know when to keep them and from whom.” _Least of all me_ rang like death bells over the sound of the hearth fire.

That… that stung. Having his loyalty questioned would have been bad enough. To be told he was not untrustworthy but just too _incompetent_ to uphold his oaths made to a worthy lord…

“I haven’t the time nor patience to resolve this matter at this moment. Until I do, your service to my heir is suspended. You may reprise your post in the guard rotation, but that is all. Dismissed.”

Martyn nodded stiffly and spared his lords of his presence as quickly as decorum allowed. He had much to think about.

The days that followed gave Cassel a lot of time to do just that. He tried to explain himself. To himself. In hindsight. Then in spite of it. He told himself it was because it wasn’t the place of a knight to speak out of turn. It didn’t work. He _had_ been working on the belief that his job was merely to protect and serve. Follow. Obey. It was exclusively the place of those above him to judge matters. All matters. That was why he served and why they ruled. In the end, his conclusions didn’t change.

Save maybe with regards to the particulars of Lord Rickard’s words to him. The knight blamed the Maester for it. Lord Rickard had been nowhere near as backhanded as all that before that southron came along.

Then again, maybe it was just stress. Gods knew the Young Lord tested everyone’s wits even when he _wasn’t_ having an off day. Even indirectly. Like when his Lord Father now called on him at feasts to ‘give his opinion’ on this or that matter. As if he were learning as much as sharing what was being discussed. As Martyn sat near the doors with the other guards on such occasions, the knight imagined he should feel affronted on his charge’s behalf. But the Young Lord seemed to appreciate it. Especially when certain visitors had their own children ask the questions as a way to avoid displaying their own ignorance.

Specifically, Lord Robard Cerwyn. And his son too. And their men. They ended up staying in Winterfell for a whole sennight while the locals taught them all about the new games and dishes and contraptions and _traditions_. All of whom seemed to have started breeding. Carvers and fishermen begat game peddlers, farmers and artisans conceived new recipes, hunters and stonemasons devised new ways of snow and ice building, there were even a bunch of youngsters working on a gigantic snowman that was hollow inside. A mite titan of Winterfell, mad as it might sound. Amidst it all, the children of _everyone_ had turned the retrieval of the sky lamps into an impromptu scavenger hunt. One that the newcomers – and Winterfell’s own guards once the younger Starks found out – got roped into as soon as Lord Cerwyn’s fire scare was allayed on account of ‘hot air goes up’, don’t you know. There was something in there about ‘air funnels’ and ‘currents’ and how hot air going up sucked in everything from around it, but only _after_ it goes and expands. The talk honestly went over Martyn’s head. Alas that the same couldn’t be said about certain other parties on the other end of that conversation. Like Medger Cerwyn, whose thinly veiled annoyance at being lumped in with the anklebiters gave way to bemused deference far too quickly for Martyn Cassel’s taste. He could easily have lived his whole life without knowing exactly why it took so little time to smell a fart.

It was a mixed blessing that Martyn only learned most else second-hand, busy as he was teaching skiing to the entire Winterfell guard. On Lord Stark’s orders, which were also delivered second-hand through the keep’s steward. Master Annard Poole had given no hint that anything ill had been said about him, but it still cut him. The knight dedicated himself to the task in an attempt to bury his dismay at being kept at such arm’s length. Even then it was slow going, but he managed to get a dozen of the men near enough to his level by the time the visiting Lord and his retinue were to leave. It would allow him to delegate and get it done by the end of the moonturn even if he resumed his prior duties.

Thankfully, he wasn’t outright barred from contact with his charge in the meanwhile. In fact, there was even one development that opened entirely new opportunities.

“Ooof!” Went Medger Cerwyn as he kissed the ground for the third and final time. “Unh! Agh… What do they feed you guards in Winterfell? Fuck!”

“Cheese and porridge.” With the occasional side of sweets and meat on special occasions. None of which was as important as protecting his charge. The visiting noble didn’t really think he’d let the Young Lord fall into the hands of a substandard teacher, did he? Or that Lord Rickard would entrust his heir’s martial training to someone who wasn’t worthy? Two out of three indeed!

Medger Cerwyn picked himself up, wincing all the while. “I’ll get you next time.”

After a year or three to train up first, maybe. Even if he did, though, Martyn wasn’t worried. Whether or not he beat him, the man would still have to basically come first in what had become Winterfell’s unofficial master-at-arms competition. The previous one had died to the same wasting sickness as the older Stark generation, and Lord Rickard didn’t rush to replace him. Instead, he began training the guards himself. One on one, then in pairs, then in threes and droves. He beat them black and blue and made them eat dust, then he took to drilling them for hours every other day. Later, he started assigning training partners, teams and even held random melees with the ones who landed strikes on him. The only man who ever managed it reliably without a team of two backing him up – at _least_ – had been Rodrik. But even he’d never scored clean points more than once every few days.

Since the Fair, though, the Lord had cut some of his drilling time in the yard in favour of training Lord Brandon. Which was about three years overdue in Martyn’s opinion, even with his knowledge of why. And it showed. The Young Lord’s scattered mind never seemed to make an appearance once he had a weapon in hand – wooden or not – but he showed no special fighting talent. Seemed like they were finally finding out where the Young Lord _wasn’t_ preposterously gifted. Somehow, though, Martyn had never really entertained the notion that it would be in _this_. Might be why the Maester spent so much time watching from his tower when Lord Brandon was out there. Maybe he shared everyone’s disbelief. But it was true.

“He really is only just starting, isn’t he?” Lord Robard Cerwyn grunted from where he stood next to the bench where his son had just sat down. “Let’s pray time is all that was lost to this mysterious sickness.”

Martyn stayed quiet as he waited for the rest of his blood to settle. Obvious as the attempt was to fish for information, it wasn’t his place to speak unless called upon. Even when he would have liked to. Like now. Because that old saying about ‘like father like son’ in this case could _also_ well be true. Lord Rickard himself had been just a tad above average when he first took lordship. Even though he’d served in a _war_. But so many years never lapsing from this routine had made him an utter terror in the ring. Even when he _wasn’t_ using his favoured weapon. And it wasn’t like Lord Brandon was going out of his way to prove anything. Especially since they hadn’t begun to figure out _his_ favoured weapon either. Which may or may not have something to do with how very visibly perplexed and _offended_ the Young Lord seemed to now be turning with every form and practice swing that his father-

“Workout high is real!?” Lord Brandon shrieked all of a sudden and wait, what? “Are you serious? A lifetime and a half and _this_ is the first time I get one? This is a croc of dog shit!”

Needless to say, the Lords Cerwyn were taken aback. So was everyone else. Even Lord Rickard, going by how high his eyebrows climbed. “Do you have something you wish to say, my son?” The Lord of Winterfell’s voice had seldom been so flat.

“Oh I heave _reams_ of curse words lining up,” Lord Brandon spat disgustedly, getting back in the beginner stance. “But they’re not worthy of you so they can suck it. Baelished by my own damned brain, I swear. One more.”

“And how is this worthy of me? Or you for that matter? One set is the least of what you still have in you.”

“No,” Lord Brandon said. “One more _hour_. And however long even afterwards. I want to see how long this lasts.”

Now Martyn was as surprised as everyone else. And when the Young Lord managed to power through three times as long as _he_ did at that age, Martyn could admit to being taken aback as well. The general astonishment of everyone else may or may not have had something to do with two of the actual decent fighters losing spars to young Walder of all people. They got their own back and then some once they snapped out of their stupor, but still!

At least the Young Lord was left a sweaty, trembling mess barely able to stand by the end – and he’d certainly feel it for _many_ days even with stretches. But as he heaved for breath and sweat dripped off his face despite the cold, Brandon Stark looked absolutely exhilarated. If this was any indication of the endurance he could build up to…

“Well now,” Lord Robard Cerwyn said as he pointedly looked between his own son and the wobbly-legged heir of his liege lord. “If only we all could consistently show this kind of dedication.”

Medger Cerwyn flushed with a mix of embarrassment and determination, and Martyn Cassel pointedly didn’t think about what it meant that he and those above him thought the same damn way.

The next morn, after Lord Cerwyn and his retinue left with a promise to hold a fair of their own in a moonturn’s time – to which House Stark would be invited and given the place of highest honor of course – the knight was finally summoned into Lord Rickard’s presence once again.

“Seeing as you are so good at keeping secrets but lack the judgment to know from whom _not_ to keep them or what all to do with them, _I_ will be deciding from now on what confidences you get to keep. The matter of your divided loyalties would normally make even this impossible, but since it involves my heir – whom I _do_ trust – I am willing to handle things through him while you use this _last_ _opportunity_ to resolve whatever this is. But there is a condition: you will swear your sword directly to him. I trust that is a reasonable way to settle this matter. If you refuse, neither you nor your family will directly serve House Stark any longer. Decide now.”

Martyn Cassel imagined it could have felt shameful. Perhaps humiliating. At the very least discomfiting, if nothing else. But as he knelt and swore his new oaths, he only felt relief.

Well, that and a glimmer of amusement at Lord Brandon wearing a permanent grimace of pain courtesy of how far he’d pushed himself.

Said amusement vanished like the wind not a day later, however, upon a message from Lord Stark that he escort Lord Brandon to the Heart Tree after the mid-day meal. Then the relief also gave way to outright disquiet on arrival.

Lord Stark was waiting for them, back turned and hands clasped behind him. The sword Ice stood erect to his left, driven tip-first into the earth. A wide, covered bowl of wood sat next to it, white and old and weathered.

“For years I’ve thought of chopping down this thing.”

Lord Brandon practically stumbled and Martyn came to a halt as well. The world seemed to waver sinisterly at the impossible claim.

“Ever since you fell. I was convinced the Gods were what hurt you. That this Tree was what hurt you. But now you say it’s what will save you.”

The Young Lord hesitated, then forced down all the pain he still felt since the yard and walked to stand next to his father. Lord Stark briefly laid a hand on his son’s head the moment he was in reach, but just as soon withdrew. He did not look away from the face of the weirwood. And as they stood there amidst red leaves and fallen snow that gleamed under strewed sunrays, they looked like Kings of Winter come again newly ordained, strong and firm and perfectly reflected in the pool of black water.

“…Father?”

“What do you know about the Pact of Ice and Fire?”

It didn’t take seeing his face to know Lord Brandon had been blindsided, but he rallied quickly. “It was the alliance arranged between Houses Stark and Targaryen when Prince Jacaerys flew to Winterfell on behalf of Queen Rhaenyra during the Dance of Dragons.”

“That’s what Cregan demanded of Prince Jacaerys, yes. Jacaerys secretly married Lord Cregan Stark's bastard sister Sara Snow. Then it was agreed that a firstborn Targaryen princess would marry into the main branch of House Stark. At the time, that meant the firstborn daughter of Jacaerys would marry Cregan's heir. It would have served House Stark well, but I didn’t summon you here for _that_ particular jar of worms. Can you tell me what all doesn’t fit in this picture that septons and maesters love to pretend not to deride?”

The Young Lord thought about an answer. He thought for quite some time. “I guess not.”

“It’s in the name, my son. Targaryens have ever been in bed with their own drama, but _we_ are not like that. And yet it was Lord Cregan himself who gave it the name it has. Do you know why? The answer lies in the words by which Torrhen turned back the dragons. The answer lies in the words by which all Northern Lords swear fealty to House Stark. The answer is that Cregan was just the latest in our line who thought the Pact’s words might not have to remain so starkly _empty_. Empty as they’ve been since the Pact’s first and only lasting embodiment was broken six thousand years ago and we were left forsworn.”

Martyn Cassel felt rooted to his spot even as he thought the faintest breeze would blow him away. Where once there was relief in his continued duty, now there began entirely new dread.

“The Storm Kings defeated the Andals and even forced those who settled their lands to swear fealty, yet House Durrandon converted to the Seven despite their victory. The Gardener kings and Hightowers were among the first to welcome the invaders with open arms afterwards. And yet no great misfortune or divine retribution descended on them despite what this would have meant under the Pact. Despite the Andals’ crimes against the forests and the Children, with whom the Reach had been closely allied until the generation immediately preceding the Three Sages. Indeed, The Gardeners and Hightowers kept their lands and their power. Even expanded them and their wealth almost constantly until the Targaryens came swooping in. What does that tell you?”

Lord Brandon slowly turned to look up at his father even as Rickard Stark never broke his stare with the face on the tree. “… You said _we_ were left forsworn.”

“Oh yes, and it happened much earlier than those times, nearly at the beginning of the Andal migration.” Rickard Stark’s voice was flat and heavy with six thousand years of disdain and recrimination. “The legend of King Tristifer IV Mudd is wholly true as written, up to and including the entirely unchallenged and untroubled alliance of seven different Andal kings and their respective hosts. _Precisely_ the sort of conspiracy that greenseers were supposed to see and undermine from its inception. Even a bloody skinchanger could have done it, what with the Andals so very conveniently suborning our own maesters’ ravens to coordinate. And yet not only did that not occur, but Tristifer wasn’t even warned about the seven-fold assault until the very end. How very convenient for the invaders, wasn’t it? What an end to the Pact that must have been. The Pact that had seen Westeros survive and thrive through the Long Night and over four thousand years!”

… Secret keeper, Martyn thought faintly.

Rickard Stark finally turned from the tree to his son, but his voice only grew harsher with scorn and ill will borne of old. “It was the Children of the Forest who broke the Pact, my son. Not the First Men. Not us. The reasons are lost to time. They could have been as serious as a mass plague that drove them to insanity. Or it could have been as petty as to begrudge Mudd’s ‘failure’ to break the Andals despite winning nine and ninety battles for our side almost unaided. In the end it matters not. _They_ are the ones disgraced. They are the _oathbreakers_.”

The shadows of leaves played on the Lords Stark’s faces. The Godswood gleamed grimly in the sun and snow. And as a breeze wafted midst red leaves and white branches, the Gods of Earth, Stone and Tree seemed to whisper TRUTH.

“… Father,” said the Young Lord, realizing… realizing something that skittered at the edge of Martyn’s thoughts like some terrible damnation that- “Why did the Children of the Forest retreat _beyond the wall?_ ”

“It does sound poetic, doesn’t it?” The lord’s voice was as stark as his name. “The most disgraced of our friends, gone to wallow with the most disgraced of our enemies. Or perhaps the Children of Summer set themselves in league with the Fell Ones of Winter once no longer strong. But life is no song or story. Your answer is in front of you. You know it already.”

“… They were oathbreakers…” Brandon Stark murmured. “And they were treated like oathbreakers. Weren’t they?”

“The Isle of Faces is as much a refuge as a prison these days. There were all too few oathkeepers among the Children and Green Men. The Red Kings sought to sell the North to the Andals, so we broke their power and slew the oathbreakers who’d sought refuge with them. The Crannogmen didn’t inherit the Neck from the Children, they _took_ it _in our name_. That and much more took place over the many centuries. It was a long, drawn-out enmity. Terrible and unrelenting. ‘Oathbreakers are damned in the eyes of the gods’ it would be said. ‘Punishment must fit the crime,’ they said. There has never been a shortage of men willing to become instruments of divine damnation. More so upon those they see as cowards and traitors. Likewise, there are always those who would climb chaos like a ladder to seize what they consider greatness for themselves.” The lord’s voice changed then. Grim rather than spiteful. Somber more than cruel. “It was our House’s burden to pull our people back out of the depths of hatred, blood rites, barbarism and _cannibalism_ they sometimes descended in. We didn’t always carry it well, but we carried it all the same. On the whole, I’d say we did well more than we didn’t by the end. The Direwolves came to us all by themselves. The North united under us, we who upheld the oaths broken even by the gods’ emissaries. And men both North and South built a world with no place for the Children in it.”

The deathly quiet of an upturned lifetime of beliefs descended upon the glade as Rickard Stark moved to his sword. The man turned to face his son, knelt down, picked up the bowl and removed the sheet of linen on top before setting it on the ground between them. There was a knife sticking out of it, but the white paste inside didn’t tell Martyn anything, and yet Lord Brandon was left speechless at the sight.

“It turns out there are certain books that Starks of the main line are supposed to transcribe every generation, to ensure that the knowledge inside is not lost to time. They’ve been left to rot since before Cregan’s time. I can only assume the knowledge of them was lost during that whole succession debacle against his power-hungry uncle. I almost didn’t find them. I didn’t even know to look for them. Turns out it’s enough that I searched for anything, though, now that I recognize what’s in front of me.” Lord Stark’s voice grew soft then, his eyes weighed with something Martyn couldn’t fathom. “In truth they are just stories and legends that ancient Starks gathered and wrote down. But recent events have me believing some of the things between the lines. I doubt I understood well enough everything implied there, especially the parts in the Old Tongue. But one thing sticks out. Men and Children cannot interbreed, and yet somehow we’ve taken their powers unto ourselves. I don’t know by what means. Right of Oath. Right of Blood, Right of Conquest. All three. Or perhaps none. I don’t know. My eyes can’t see clearly enough. But all this is probably clear as day to yours. Isn’t it?”

The Young Lord stared at the white paste as if spellbound. “I… don’t think I understand as much as you think I do.”

“Don’t you?” Lord Stark echoed, warm and loving. “When magic comes again to stand right in front of me? When, more than any rite wreaked in the past, it is in whole already _mine_. Don’t you really?” The man held out an arm entreatingly while his other reached down to grab the knife.

Martyn Cassel jerked where he stood and a noose seemed to strangle him at the sight of his Young Lord walking towards _the man holding the knife_ -

“Cassel.”

Breath seemed to stick in the Knight’s throat at being addressed so suddenly. “Y-yes My Lord?”

“Do not interfere.” Said the man who’d just finished talking about barbarism, hatred, blood rites and _cannibalism_ \- “You may see to it we don’t fall into the black pool or otherwise injure ourselves unduly, but that is all.”

“I…”

Rickard Stark spread his son’s hand and raised the knife… but it never came down. The tip hovered there above the pale smooth skin until Lord Brandon gently pried it from him. The older man gave no resistance, and Martyn couldn’t grasp the depth of feeling that passed between the two before the Young Lord grit his teeth and sliced his palm himself.

All breath seemed to leave Martyn’s lungs in a gust. He didn’t kill him. Lord Rickard didn’t kill him. He never meant to kill him. Or eat him. What was he thinking, of course Lord Rickard wasn’t going to kill his son and eat him, the Lord _adored_ him-

Rickard Stark nodded tightly and wrapped his son’s hand closed inside his, blood pooling in. “Who comes before the Old Gods this day?”

“I am Brandon of House Stark.” The words started with a waver, but they steadied and flowed as the Young Lord decided what to say. If it really was him who decided anything. “Winter’s heir, trueborn and noble. I come… to heed and be heeded. Who heeds me?”

“I am Rickard of House Stark.” The Lord slashed his own palm open then clenched his fist. “Lord of the North. King of Winter. Steward of Vows Ancient and New.” Their hands clasped together above the vessel then, father and son letting their lifeblood mix and flow and drip into the wooden dish as they spoke as one. “To Winterfell we pledge our faith, the faith of First Men and Green Men and the Children true. Hearth and harvest I promise you, my own. Our swords and spears and arrows I ever will command in service of our peace and kinship. We shall grant mercy to our weak, help to our helpless, and justice to all, and we shall never fail. I swear it by earth and water. I swear it by bronze and iron. **We Swear It by Ice and Fire**.”

Martyn’s heart stalled. The Godswood teetered suddenly as if weighed down by the weight of the world. The two lords’ eyes seemed to mist over with white fog. The sun flew across the sky. Its scattered beams moved and winked out as shadows took their place the more each disappeared from amidst the branches. A brother slain seemed to stand protectively above the son and father in the pool of black water. Then, suddenly, the calls of snow shrikes snapped the knight out of his stupor to find that hours had passed and the moon was out in the night sky.

He could see it through the leaves where he lay. He’d faltered and stumbled. Fallen down onto the ground. He barely remembered it happen. It was vague and distant, like a dream.

“Accursed oathbreakers, you’d worm your way even into the Greendream if you could. Begone, Begone, **Begone From My Demesne!”**

A gleam of rippling steel was all Martyn glimpsed before his left eye seemed to burst inside his skull. The agony faded in the same instant, but as he flinched and rolled through the snow, clutching his face, it felt like the pain bled out more than anything else. Seeped away like the red sap that poured out of the face on the weirwood, once Lord Rickard wrenched his sword out of its left-most eye. The eyes and mouth all seemed to bleed despite that it’d only been stabbed once.

Madness. It had to be. Blasphemy, his mind wanted to scream. But even as crows called out in triumph at the edge of his hearing, the red sap seemed to wash away along with the dried up streaks that used to be there since the ancient days, leaving the face stark clean.

Lord Rickard Stark beheld the Heart Tree for a time. It looked serene now, somehow. Almost at peace. Then he turned away, sat down next to the pool, covered the bowl back up – the shape of a weirwood seemed to have drawn itself up in the blood – and tucked his sleeping son next to his side under his cloak of bear fur. Then he quietly cleaned Ice of the sap and polished it with a white cloth while waiting for the Young Lord to wake up. Of pain or even traces of injury on either of their hands, there was no sign.

Later that night, after the Godswood was finally left behind with its new peace and quiet, Martyn stood vigil outside the Crypts while the Lords Stark descended in its depths and didn’t emerge for hours. After that, he trailed after them all the way to the Lord’s Solar, feeling less like a guard and more like an unprepared initiate into some high mysteries as he watched Lord Rickard set down three tomes before his heir. _Rights_ , author unknown. _Rites_ , also unknown. And _The Self and Its Parts_ , by Brandon Snow.

A sennight after, the Stark in Winterfell rode out of home and hearth, his heir at his front and the Crown of Winter on his brow. Martyn and his best skiers were called as honour guard. They rode the kingsroad North for a day. Skied east for another. Then Lord Rickard had them build snow huts and set up a camp in the middle of nowhere while he and his son went on alone. Six days they waited there while winds grew biting and murders of crows hounded their days and nights. A distant sky lamp raised once in the morning and at eve was their only sign that the two Lords were still alive. Then a thundersnow broke out on the eve of the seventh, loud and furious and almost red inside when lightning burned the sky. It lasted through the night. It would have buried them alive. _Did_ bury them alive, but the snow huts kept them safe and the air lasted long enough that they dug themselves out with no man lost.

They didn’t wait for the lamp to rise. They skied with all haste on. Then they trudged. First on bear paws and then without them when the snow seemed to inexplicably thin out and stop entirely. No one seemed to care, at least at first. Martyn himself didn’t. Not as long as they found them. But they certainly _did_ care by the time they did. They cared very strongly.

Lord Rickard sat with Ice over his knees, quiet and eyes closed as if denying right of guest to some fell thing. Facing him knelt Lord Brandon, steady and content and settled amidst papers filled with drawings and words, each in a different tongue. He was drawing something even now. The leaf of paper was set on the bottom of the upturned bowl of paste and blood, now emptied out. What had been their snow hut was spread in a field around them, uneven in span and shape but not in height. It was level and immaculate and if Martyn was a betting man, he’d wager all his coin on what it would likely look like from above. He knew a raven when he saw one. A raven in flight. An island of white in the sea of deep black surrounding it on all sides for a hundred yards. A sea of crows. Crows to the last struck _dead_.

Martyn didn’t speak. Wouldn’t have. But he wasn’t alone.

“My lords, what…”

“Crows don’t do well when you glare, turns out. Now when you have more eyes. A thousand eyes and one.”

All of which told Martyn and the rest of them absolutely nothing.

“I don’t suppose you saw any extra eyes on any of the crows you passed by?” asked the Young Lord, not looking up.

“…We didn’t check,” Martyn said, completely lost. “We… could do that now?”

“Please do. You can do it to all of them while you gather their wing and tail feathers. I’m thinking a cloak. A big one for when I grow up. Yes, that will be just perfect.”

It was confusing, ghoulish work that lasted the rest of the morning, but they did their job as quickly as they could. They found no third or extra eyes on any of them.

“Lovely,” the Young Lord grumbled. “Well, I’ll get him next time.”

“No you won’t.” Lord Rickard finally spoke, startling everyone. “You seem to have no issue putting things on paper anymore at least. Does this mean this has done what you needed?”

Lord Brandon looked concerned but nodded confidently despite that. “Yes. More and better than I’d hoped even.”

“Good. Because there won’t be a next time.” The man finally stood up, sheathed his sword and sent everyone but Martyn away to burn the crows’ remains. Then he had him set up a tent to give them privacy. To his surprise, he was invited inside once he was done. There, Lord Rickard turned to his son again. “Strip to your waist.”

Lord Brandon looked as thrown as Martyn felt, but did as ordered. Then they were both equally shocked at the long scar that stretched from navel shoulder, front to back. The skin below the cut was pale as well, paler than the rest. And when ordered by Lord Rickard, Martyn reached out to touch Lord Brandon’s arm. His skin was cold to the touch.

“This happened on day three. You lurched and thrashed violently for half the day. I all but roasted your right side over the fire for the rest of it, then I buried you in the snow naked when you started to burn up. Not that either did much good.” The amount of control Lord Rickard was forcing upon his voice… Martyn couldn’t even imagine it. “Do you recall any of what you _dreamed_ that would have caused this?”

“… No.” Lord Brandon had seemed almost jubilant up to then but now he almost looked afraid.

“That’s that then,” Lord Stark said, and Martyn finally thought to look more closely at his face. He looked exhausted. “Until and unless that changes, you will not do this again.”

They gathered what all could be gathered and left, quiet and thoughtful and wary on the part of the guards Martyn had brought with him. Questions and thoughts spun in his mind, about what all Lord Stark intended by letting even this much slip out. He never failed, though, to circle back to one, big fact.

Secrets, Martyn thought grimly as Lord Brandon called a halt to their party on the second day back, so they could dig through the scraps from an old limestone quarry. Secret keeper. Him and him alone. If even a word of what he knew got out, his life would be forfeit, his family disgraced and his entire House would be attained.

Somehow, though, as he watched his charge grouse and rant and wax poetically about heat and lye and how he’d just need one year to make a fortune from scraps, Martyn Cassel didn’t feel all that worried about the future.


	9. The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (I)

“-. 273 AC .-“

“Are they back yet?”

“Not yet,” Lyarra Stark told her daughter.

_“_ What about now?”

“No,” the Lady of Winterfell answered with ease of long practice.

“…How about now?”

“Still no.” _Very_ long practice. “Now come here and let me check that embroidery.”

“I think I messed up the inlay,” her daughter grumbled, passing the handkerchief on. “This pattern’s hard!”

“Wait till you start on weaving,” the woman said, inspecting her work. “But you’re right. You’ll have to redo that last petal. Now, do you think you can tease the threads back?”

“Of course!” Lyanna Stark said loftily, before deflating. “… I’ll probably pull too hard and mess up again.”

“Well we can’t have that.” Especially since this was supposed to be a personal gift to Lord Cerwyn, one of three that Lyanna was making. “Here, I’ll do it this time. Watch closely, dear.”

Her daughter indeed watched very closely. She worked diligently even afterwards, up until Lyarra called a halt to their sewing time for the day. Only then did she run off to badger Ned about sword practice.

Not for the first time, Lyarra pondered the differences in her daughter. Before Brandon’s make-believe games, Lyanna had been far too wild to sit down and learn the womanly skills for more than half an hour. At best. But then she fell in love with those living stories and became extremely thorough in milking every opportunity to squeeze past a bad roll of the dice. Learning to sew in order to beat Brandon in game figurines was just one of many rounds in their ‘perpetual contest of passive-aggressive one-upmanship’ as Brandon called it. Though truth be told, Ned was probably more deserving of praise for Lyanna’s growth – he’d taken _very_ well to managing his ‘party members’ even outside game time.

None of which Lyanna appreciated, even as she failed to catch onto either brother’s particular approach to motivating her.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though, as was made clear at least once a day. Often during dinner. Which was to say, her Ned was perhaps getting too used to deliberately provoking his sister. Usually by _not_ humouring her, which Lya always took as a personal affront. How her daughter could find so much to bristle over when Ned said and did so little to her personally, Lyarra didn’t know. It wouldn’t have been such a bother to child-rear away if it weren’t so effective in getting Lyanna to acquire useful skills. Case in point, Ned’s ‘goading’ was the only reason the girl was so determined to sew a perfect blue rose on not one but three handkerchiefs for their soon-to-be-hosts.

“Don’t worry, brother mine,” Ned had reassured Benjen at dinner. “You’re still too young for people to expect personal gifts. No one will be offended for at least another year or two.”

“I’ll make it up to them when I’m big!” Benjen vowed, bless his innocent soul. “Like Lya!”

Lyanna had, of course, been sitting right there.

_If you feed a moose,_ the Flint told her once, _it’ll become rapacious and attack the next man that’s got no food to offer._

For all her sudden diligence, her daughter didn’t seem to realise she was less a moose and more a small, harmless puppy.

Didn’t mean Lyarra wouldn’t take what opportunities the Gods gave her though. She’d give it another one or two moons to tend Lyanna’s leanings. If she managed to impress on her daughter the usefulness of womanly arts in having a good life, maybe she could even bring on a governess to teach her further. Teach her everything Lyarra herself never learned. Much as she hated to admit it, Lyarra Stark had been as wild has her daughter when young, only she’d never gotten over it until it was too late. After her parents’ deaths when she was a child, she was fostered with the Flints in the mountains. Her mother’s family. It had done well to ground her in archery, horseback riding, hunting and woodsmanship, even swinging an axe now and again. But while decent, she never actually _excelled_ despite her thoughts to the contrary. Later, when she was wedded and realised how short she was in certain areas – marriage did _not_ mean she could get away with just popping out a child every other year, unlike what she’d loudly bewailed for so long – she’d hoped her mother-in-law would teach her what she lacked. Stature, comportment, dancing, accounting, household management, making preserves for winter times. She’d been shoddy in almost everything when Rickard wrapped her in his cloak. But the sickness took Marna Locke along with everyone else before she could pass on what Lyarra needed. Lyarra dearly hoped to spare Lyanna going through what she had after the sickness outbreak. Was _still_ going through even today. As for the rest, well…

What use were weapons or riding or woodsmanship when your husband was so much better in all of them? Especially when someone always has to stay behind at home? Never mind everyone else’s expectations.

_You should stop thinking like a man_ , her aunt had tried to impress on her so many times. _Marriage is a union, not a competition. A house divided against itself only ends in tears or worse._

Fortunately, these days she did well enough for herself when it came to organising. That included family outings. A good thing, seeing as she’d had to take over all travel plans for their trip to the Cerwyns. It helped that it was a good distraction from her worries over her husband and son. She hoped they were well, wherever they had gone. She wanted to believe they’d finally bridged their estrangement. Public displays of unity only did so much, especially when they kept so very silent in private when asked what they’d been doing. Together.

Finally.

She thought she’d been handling it well. Then she jolted awake in the middle of the night on the tenth day after their departure.

If it’d been a dream or nightmare, she couldn’t remember it. She turned over and curled into the covers trying to get back to sleep, but it didn’t come. She rose and pulled on a nightgown, then went to poke and prod at the hearth. It didn’t help. She paced the entire length of her bedroom, the moonbeams tween the cracks in the blinds her only light to see by. The moonlight always reflected off the snowy rooftops through the master bedroom windows in the winter months. Usually she was enamored with them, and the way they slid and climbed the walls. Reflected off the smoky vanity mirror. Played on glistening skin and hair while she and her man were making love. Tonight it only summoned up memories of want and need she had no way to indulge. It made her angry. Hadn’t she already lost enough rest, unable to drift off until damn well near morn due to worry about her menfolk for four whole nights and days after they left?

Coming to a stop near the desk, she briefly considered lighting the lantern to read for an hour or two. But her mind just conjured up an image of Brandon muttering about low light and tired eyes and going blind before his time. She couldn’t even dismiss it as fanciful ramblings since it was one of his more recent ones. Although just how copper and saltwater were supposed to solve the problem, she had no idea. She went and opened the window instead. Stood and shivered as the chilly wind washed over her. Gazed out of it. The one facing north. Then she turned, put on her slippers, threw on a coat and left the room in a haste.

She knew those clouds and those rumbles, but she’d seldom seen or heard them during winter times.

Soon after, she emerged on top of the Great Keep from where she could see everything around Winterfell for leagues and leagues. When the weather was clear at least, and it most definitely was now. No fog, few clouds and the moon bright in the sky. As she’d guessed, there was a mighty thunderstorm roaring and flashing far to the northeast. What she _hadn’t_ expected was for someone to beat her there.

Her Ned stood at the farthest crenel.

She’d been right in suspecting him to be anxious at his father and brother’s absence, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. Going treasure hunting in his Lord Father’s rooms was something she’d have expected from Lyanna or Benjen, not him. But her eyes didn’t deceive her – he was wrapped in one of Rickard’s cloaks. It unfolded behind him like a sea of black atop the snow.

Everyone said parents weren’t supposed to play favorites, but the more time passed the more she thought everyone was a lying sack of horse dung. She loved Lyanna like a mother loved her only daughter. She cherished Benjen like any mother would her youngest. She depended on Brandon probably too much, after all these years of being the only one _he_ could always depend on. But Ned, Ned was her favorite. Her little quiet wolf. He could have been ugly instead of fine, brash instead of calm, loud enough to shake the rafters and none of it would have changed anything. When Brandon took sick and only seemed to get worse, when even her strong husband broke after that last straw, when Lyarra was set to weep and waste her days away at the side of her firstborn’s deathbed, Ned was the one who’d saved her.

Watching him, her mind travelled back to earlier times. She and Rickard had begun their marriage with the all too serious worry that House Stark could very well end if they did not have heirs, and quickly. Or at least the main line. Once they got an heir and a spare, though, Rickard proved to be a fair bit more ambitious than he’d made it seem since the wasting took his parents. Rickard’s visit to King’s Landing didn’t do much besides give their oh so great king crazy ideas – a second Wall? Madness! But it also seemed to have planted a seed in Rickard’s mind about southern ties and fostering their sons. One that steadily grew over that year. Fostering. In the _south_. But then Brandon took with that terrible fever and things only seemed to get worse after that, and those seeds withered and died without even a sprout. To her eternal shame, a quiet part of Lyarra was glad for it. Had things been different, Ned may well have been sent off to Steffon Baratheon or Jon Arryn by now.

Walking over, she was surprised to hear Ned humming. There was something even more surprising though. “Oh my, your voice is sounding a bit high, is someone coming down with a chi-YAH!” Lyarra Stark shrieked and jumped back, hand going to her chest in fright as a second head popped out of Ned’s throat. “G-gods! What-Benjen!?”

Her baby boy proceeded to laugh at the poor mother he’d just scared out of half her life.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Ned said for both of them. His fingers could barely be seen beneath Ben’s chin as he held their father’s cloak around them both. “Lyanna’s a log as usual, but Benjen was off plundering.”

“So you came up here?”

“I wanna see the eyes!” Ben piped up before deflating. “But there’s just clouds!”

“And thunder,” Ned chided.

“But I wanted to see the lightning!”

Eyes? Lightning? Who?

Benjen proceeded to tumble his way through one of his most bizarre fancies yet. Usually Lyarra found them endearing. Even funny sometimes. There was nothing like Benjen napping his way from a dream straight into a daydream to scrape the muck off her mind after hours of drudgery. This one was fairly nonsensical even for him though. She couldn’t even piece it together in her own mind after he was done. Something about birds, a murder and Rickard baking a Brandon pie while the boy shot lightning from his eyes at every last crow he could see. There might even have been something in there about a half-blind raven swooping after one of the crows who’d stolen its eye for some reason, but she wasn’t sure. Even Benjen couldn’t decide if it was the crow or the sky who’d done it. Apparently.

Oh well. At least it wasn’t one of his heart-to-Heart-Tree war tales. Why that dead brother of Cassel’s figured into Benjen’s fancies so often, Lyarra had no idea. Her youngest had barely been born when the man decided to spit on every last shred of fealty and responsibility and – no. No. She wouldn’t go down that road. Not right now. “What was that you were humming?” she asked instead.

Benjen proceeded to hum it all over again. It was a surprisingly slow and low drone. Well, for a child whose voice was still years off from breaking. “Bran’s sick of it!” He crowed after a few loops. “But he dreams about it. It makes the castles move! They sa-spra-spou-“

“Sprout,” Ned said.

“Sprout! Sprout right out the ground!”

Well, her children certainly weren’t lacking in imagination.

They watched the distant thunderstorm until frost nipped at her toes and she cajoled them back inside. Ned went willingly. Benjen not so much, but he went all the same. She tucked them in and kissed them goodnight. She also went to her sleeping daughter to do the same. She didn’t stir. When Lyarra was once again alone, she found that sleep no longer eluded her. She slept uninterrupted for the rest of the night. She dreamed of summer, winter, and birds flying and falling up and down into a red-hot sky, trailed by black feathers that fell and drifted in the wind.

Lyarra had no words for her relief when the second sennight passed and the away party returned. They looked harassed and exhausted and confounded at having had to carry quarry scrap all the way home, but they had no wounds on them or a man lost. Unlike their departure, though, it was Brandon who was the animated one, for all that she barely had time to embrace him before her other children pulled him away. And Rickard was so spent that she was amazed he managed to get through the rest of the evening instead of collapsing like he did when he finally reached their bed.

She was going to keep her peace despite how much she wanted answers, but for once her husband pre-empted her.

“Our son is a seer,” her lord husband grumbled as he clambered into bed next to her. He couldn’t even hold his eyes open. “He sees so many things. Knows so many things. Dreams so many things. Imagines so much. Whole worlds exist in his mind. Stories. _Memories_. I don’t even know where to start. Whenever I think I’ve finally grasped him, it’s lost in the heat of a red sky. That’s how the crow escaped.”

… What. “… Husband, what-?”

“He’s been haunted his whole life. Haunted by a crow with one too many eyes.” Rickard embraced her, his once strong arms as feeble as his apparent belief that anything he said explained anything. “He’s been spied on too. Him and the rest of us. Fucking Targaryens and their bastards, the maggots’ll burrow under your skin the moment you turn your back. Brynden _fucking_ Rivers _._ ” What-? “Bloody oathbreakers, not one generation without our house tripping over the worst of them. What is this world, when the worst kind of traitor is the only one in this madness _not_ out to make a cock-up somehow? Fucking Bloodraven. Every rumor about him was true, he’s a fucking _greenseer_. And he’s been warding the fucking crow away from our son, not that he knew it. Bah! Maybe I shouldn’t’ve banished him until after this mess was over, but fuck him. _I_ rule this land. I have no patience for smug shitstains pulling strings behind my back. The raven was enough defence for the two of us anyway.”

Rickard drifted into silence then… But no, no! She couldn’t just leave things at that. Lyarra kneaded her fingers through his hair. Firmly. “ _Husband_.”

The man blinked tiredly, barely seeing her, then his eyes fluttered closed again. But he managed to scrounge up some last words. “A one-eyed raven guards him. Us. A raven _I’m_ haunted by. The crow runs from it. I don’t know what they mean. Neither does Brandon. What they are. Dreams and portents. Grumpkins and snarks.”

Rickard Stark finally drifted off and Lyarra Stark suddenly experienced the very uncharacteristic urge to push her man off the bed and see how he liked having his life thrown upside down. He hadn’t even told her if whatever ailed Brandon was finally fixed or not!

She didn’t. Instead, she moulded herself to him, moved one of his hands between her breasts and slipped hers around him, twining one of her legs with his too. Then she waited. Watched him through the night, her thoughts too many and jumbled to let her more than drowse on and off. And when he moved, she moved against him every time. Her patience paid off half-way through the hour of the owl. Her husband roused from sleep to use the privy. And when he returned, she was there with all her frustration and impatience and hands gone a-wandering and her _demands_.

Lord Rickard of House Stark never did suffer anyone’s demands well, and she was no exception.

She severely underestimated her husband though, exhausted beyond belief or not. By the time the snarling wolf was done putting her in her proper place, she herself was too tired, tender and sore in all the right places to react the way she should have once she finally got Rickard to give some ‘explanations.’ None of which she appreciated. ‘Our son needed to dream himself up a second brain’ indeed. Because it’s not like something tried to stop it and caused a _thunderstorm_ that all but buried them alive and nearly killed them all! And did she mention that Brandon was literally sliced in half at some point? That he had a huge scar from navel to shoulder now? But don’t you worry, wife, he’s perfectly fine now!

“If he weren’t so hopeless without me I’d think he were a god made flesh come from the stars,” Rickard murmured as sleep finally reclaimed him. “But then I remember that he broke his own mind just by thinking too hard. He can’t even blame the tree for that one. Or Rivers. He can’t even lay it all on the crow. Fucking crows…”

Gods, what did she ever do to be cursed so?

Lyarra glared sullenly at him, but when she tried to speak and only moaned as a result of Rickard’s enduring _connection_ , she gave it up as a bad job. She’d talk to Brandon at some point instead. Maybe he’d make more sense. Gods, she was seriously hoping for _Brandon_ to make sense now.

That morning she couldn’t move a muscle under the stare of the one-eyed raven on the windowsill. It was black and large enough to enshroud a full-grown man even as it fit the window somehow. Its feathers smoked as if it’d flown too high near to the sun. Then it opened its beak and made a sound like _rat-tat-tat_ and she crashed awake with a gasp to something pecking at the window.

Rickard didn’t move at all from where he lay, despite him being the lighter sleeper between them. Grunting from the lingering soreness, she left the bed, put on her slippers and braved the morning chill to open the blinds. There was a bird pecking at the smoky glass. A raven, by the shape and size. She opened the window and tried to shoo it away, but that’s as far as she got.

The raven sidestepped her swing, blinked two perfectly fine eyes at her, hopped over her arm and flew all the way to the foot of the bed.

Lyarra Stark barely had time to spin around, hand at her breast in sudden fright as her dream resurfaced, before her mind caught up to her eyes.

Rickard Stark sat up in bed and held out an arm for the bird to gingerly hop on, opening eyes misted over with white fog. They cleared soon after, but the bird did not flee his touch. And the familiar steel grey of her husband’s sight would never erase what had just happened.

“I’m a skinchanger,” her man said idly, stroking the raven’s tufts once and twice as he assimilated this great and new and monumental truth into his life. Then he flicked his arm and the bird flew back out and away. “Right. Back to work.”

Rickard Stark stood from the bed, pulled on his clothes, gave his wife a kiss as he passed her by and went to work.

Lyarra stared flatly after him, then she called for her maids to help her ready herself so that at least one of them could get around to catching up on everything that _wasn’t_ just more work.


	10. The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In answer to what various readers of this have asked by now, the "uplift" information available to the SI includes, thanks to his perfected dream recall, everything I learned, heard or glimpsed up to the moment Chapter 1 of this story was first posted. It does NOT include things I became aware of afterwards, even from reader feedback. So that's 'Yes' for paper, concrete and, say, glass and ceramics (my father was manager at a glass making plant while my mother worked in a china and bauble factory), but 'No" for things like pykrete or the Chinese wheelbarrow.
> 
> I did spend a lot of time on WikiHow though. And it's not impossible that other people might come up with (or import) certain things if it makes sense in context.
> 
> Now back to the story.

## “-. 273 AC .-“

To Lyarra Stark’s chagrin, Brandon made no more sense than her husband did. She tried to feel mollified by their admission that they themselves didn’t understand things any better than she did now. It even worked, somewhat. But only when she didn’t think about the horrifying sight of that long, purple scar bisecting her firstborn son straight through. It didn’t even look like a scar, more like an unnaturally thick cut that had fused but not scabbed over. And didn’t look like it would. That he was cold to the touch on every part of his body below it didn’t make her feel any better, never mind Brandon’s reassurances that it didn’t hurt or impede him any. Lyarra would not apologise for giving herself a day to cling to and fuss over and dote on her firstborn.

Then she threw herself back into keeping the household in order while assembling their baggage train. They had a lot to put in place if they wanted to put on the proper appearance to the Cerwyns. Unlike the South where you were judged based on the lavishness of your court and how generous your table, in the North guests were expected to bring as much as they were likely to consume. That meant food and drink, if not gifts. It was a mixed blessing that things moved at such a frenetic pace. It let her keep her mind of things.

Not _all_ things though. In fact, there were several developments that would stay with her. And possibly go down in history.

The first was right on the day after her menfolk’s return from what was now being called Crow’s End among the guards. Rickard sent for young Walder, then took him, her, Brandon and Martyn Cassel to the lichyard. There, he led the way amidst the many headstones spotted with lichen to the small side entrance into the disused First Keep. The one that opened into the ancient servant quarters where Old Nan had taken residence ‘because who better to tend to the departed servants of the Winter Kings?’ Lyarra didn’t think the old woman had ever actually _explained_ what she meant by that, but-

“Alysanne Stark.” Old Nan yelped and pricked herself on the spindle. “Daughter of Berron Stark and Lorra Royce. Would you have me go to my grave without ever knowing my grand-aunt?”

The only one that sputtered worse than Lyarra Stark at that revelation was the old woman herself. How did Rickard know that? Wait, she had a secret grand-aunt living under her roof this whole time!?

“What, really?” Brandon said, amazed. Then something closer to astonishment stole over his face. “Wait, _you’re_ Dunk’s sweetheart!?”

Now it was Rickard’s turn to be surprised. Not that the rest of them were much better.

A deluge of confessions, protestations and frankly preposterous histrionics ensued. One that Rickard stomped on by way of a flabbergasted Walder – Duncan the Tall’s grandson! – assigned as Cassel’s squire while the Lord Paramount of the North publicly marched Old Nan into the Great Keep on pain of never being allowed to tell stories again. Lyarra promptly followed that by making her Lyanna’s governess. Many half-hearted griping followed about toothless, shrunken and wrinkled unsuitability. Her grand-aunt doth protest too much, Lyarra fumed. Wasn’t she the only one of the Stark widows in her generation that _didn’t_ cause a succession crisis? And what about old uncle Edwyle? Or Willam and Donnor before him? Did they know? Did they allow it? What even was all this? Where was the elder wisdom? Where was the common sense? Gods!

Her daughter decried her terrible fate up until the Maester showed himself to be just as scandalised. “I advise against this, My Lord! My Lady! You can’t mean for the young lady to be led astray by old wives’ tales!” Then Lyanna was suddenly overjoyed at the development, gloating up, down and sideways that she’d now have ‘old story lady’ all to herself. Although she might have done it just to make Benjen wail in dismay. Lyarra could never be sure with her daughter.

The second big thing that happened was Lyanna’s exceedingly dolorous tantrum mid-way through the third sennight. Or, rather, what happened in the lead-in to it. And around it. And Gods knew how else.

Rickard rose from bed at the hour of the finch and went to the Godswood. He didn’t say why, but didn’t say anything against her accompanying him either. So she went with him. They found Brandon standing statue-still on the biggest root that sunk into the black pool, staring down into the depths. What followed confirmed Lyarra’s suspicions that her husband and son dreamed far different dreams than hers or anyone else’s.

“You’ve been dreamwalking all this time,” Rickard said, stopping just outside reaching distance of their son. “But only now you look to your own?”

“I like to fly,” Brandon said, not looking away from the reflection-less water. “And if I drift too low, I get distracted.”

“By?”

“People are dying everywhere. All the time.” Lyara shivered, and it wasn’t just from the cold. “Their dreams aren’t too bright, but they’re loud. And they leave things behind. Especially if there isn’t a weirwood conveniently nearby to ferry them off. Maybe that’s why magic’s built on blood and murder. A fresh kill means _everything_ on the other side is immediately available for… whatever.”

“Hmm,” Rickard hummed, as if he weren’t at all rattled by hearing such things from his son of ten name days. Sometimes, Lyarra seriously wondered how her husband could even move with so much ice in his veins. “Where have you flown?”

“The Wall. The Barrowlands. The Neck. Moat Cailin. Bunch of other places.”

“The south?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Don’t.” Lyarra blinked in surprise. Brandon did as well, finally looking up from the black depths.

“I am not pleased you’ve been flying anywhere at all, mind,” Rickard said flatly. “I hope I won’t have to remind you daily of what it’s already done to you.” Brandon had the grace to look abashed. “I’ll not ignore that this is my oversight, and that you’ve lived up to your word on everything up to now.”

“Thanks, dad.”

“But you _should_ have kept me informed, if not consulted with me on your nightly activities. As you did not, I find that my trust in your judgment has sharply decreased.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed,” said the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. “I realise I’m not any sort of seer, but absence of shared experience is not absence of understanding. Or wisdom. Or _authority_. That snobbery belongs to Maesters, fools and madmen, not you.”

“...”

“Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Outside the family, I’ll be deciding from now on where you fly and who you dream with until further notice. And in case your dreaming self can’t help taking all leave of his senses, let me make one thing clear right here: don’t even _look_ at King’s Landing. I’ll know just from the look on your face if you get too close to that pit.”

Brandon made a face as if he could guess the reason behind that last order. Lyarra was absolutely certain he didn’t though. Not by a long shot. Doubted he did. Hoped he didn’t. The sort of filth that made up that cesspool of a city, maybe he could conceive of it. But the sheer malice that southrons showed one another stretched the edges of Lyarra’s own disbelief. And the depravities inflicted by septons on girls and boys no older than Brandon and the rest of her children, Gods, those were the worst. Lyarra couldn’t stomach thinking about them for more than a second, and she’d only learned of them second-hand.

Her husband’s voice pulled her out of her dark thoughts. “I hope we won’t need to have this talk again. Now is there anything _else_ I should perhaps be informed of, my son?”

“… I’m not sure?” Brandon said uncertainly. Lyarra didn’t know if she should be proud, suspicious or alarmed at her son’s easy compliance with her husband’s commands. “I guess sometimes it feels like I’m still dreaming even when I’m awake, except at the same time not? Almost like I’m skinchanging, but without actually doing it? Even when I _am_ doing it too. Like I’m doing it twice, but not really?”

Lyarra stared blankly at her son. For that matter, so did her husband.

Brandon scowled at them both. “Well, you asked! I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“…Alright then, we’ll have to wait and see,” Rickard said eventually, then held an arm out. “Come now. The night may be for dreaming, but we still have to find our worth in the waking world.”

Brandon made far too strange a face at Rickard’s choice of words, but hopped off the roots and let himself be walked out of the Godswood and back to the Great Keep.

It wasn’t until the mid-day meal that Lyarra realised she’d forgotten to ask just why Brandon had gone to the Godswood at all. She also got an all-new reason to be glad their family supped lunch in private.

“So Lyanna,” her eldest son said idly as he spread butter over a slice of bread. Slowly. With shaky, exhausted hands. “When are you going to introduce us to your friend?”

“Eh?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’d’ve gone with a rabbit myself, but as far as ponies go it’s pretty much perfect. Young, strong, hearty and with the cleanest, whitest coat of hair I’ve ever seen dreamed in my life.”

Lyanna Stark froze.

“I mean, I _would_ feel better if you’d be at least a bit hesitant to ride it all the way down a bottomless watery abyss, but you’re probably old hand at that at this point, right?”

The girl gaped at her older brother, shocked.

“You might want to look up every once in a while, though. Might help to know when you’re being watched and-”

“Shut up!” Lyanna threw her bowl of honeyed porridge at Brandon’s face. “Shut up, shut up, shut UP!” She wailed when Brandon ducked under the table just in time. “That’s none of your business!”

“Lya, what-?“

“You’ve already got everything! Mom, Dad, everyone likes you and you get to do anything you want! What about us, huh? What if I want to do what _I_ want, huh? I’ve got stuff I like too _,_ and you can’t have it! It’s _my_ wonderland.” Lyanna Stark then fled the room in tears.

Lyarra Stark stared after her daughter in open-mouthed shock. And she was far from the only one.

“Er…” Brandon slowly peered over the edge of the table. “That didn’t go any way I expected.”

“You don’t say,” Rickard said, just as bewildered. Not that anyone could see it but her.

“I request permission to finally delve the Greendream, Father.”

“Granted. Clearly _something_ must be done if you are not, in fact, the first in your generation to do so.”

Lyarra Stark seriously considered the fringe benefits of a cast-iron skillet.

“So _that’s_ why she didn’t see the lightning!” Benjen cried in a sudden revelation that escaped Lyarra entirely. It fairly staggered everyone else too. “But how’d she miss the eyes?”

Brandon looked oddly at his brother. “How indeed.” He gave Benjen a _very_ intense stare then. “Do I want to know what _your_ dreams are like?”

“How should I know?” Benjen said with childish confusion. “I never know what you’re thinking, and I follow you around all the time!”

No he didn’t.

“No you don’t,” Brandon said slowly. “Unless we’re talking about different things here.”

“Or the same one,” Rickard said lowly, rising to go sit next to Benjen instead. “Son, why don’t you tell us about your dreams for a change, hmm?”

“You want to know about my dreams?” Benjen asked, amazed.

“Ned, you too.”

“Alright? I don’t think I’ll have much to tell though. I don’t dream much at all.”

“Right,” Lyarra said briskly, standing up and smoothing down her dress. “While you three do that, I’ll go attend to my daughter.” And maybe _one_ of her family will finally make some sense.

She didn’t. All she got from Lyanna’s blubbering diatribe was that her daughter was as quick to miss her brother as she was to resent him for suddenly commanding all of their father’s attention. Never mind that she never used to seek Rickard out all that much in the first place. Lyarra swallowed her pride and went to Brandon for answers again. And when he didn’t make much more sense than Lyanna did – he just ended up rambling about some girl called Alice and a land of wonders or other – she went to her husband. She really should have done that from the start.

“She doesn’t have the greensight, I don’t think,” Rickard told her that same day in the Godswood as he shook the snow off his naked body. Brandon’s madness was catching after all, Lyarra thought crossly. “We do have both greenseers and wargs in our ancestry. But that doesn’t mean normal dreams can’t drift down the right paths. Especially with a Heart Tree so close that’s as ancient as ours. Doubly so now that I’ve cleared it of miscreants, so to speak. There’s weight to old things. Maybe it has its own pull, at least on those with open minds. And the young have the most open mind of all. Although I think Lyanna might be a tad too _single_ -minded, if she’s really wandering into the Greendream without realising it. The opposite of little Ben. He doesn’t seem to be self-aware while _in_ his dreams, but he remembers them easily. Now, at least.”

The Greendream. The Flint had talked to her of it once. The world where faithful first men went to rest with the Gods after death. And where the unfaithful met their final end. Those executed in sight of a Heart Tree at least. She’d never given much thought to how that world twined with _this_ one. And for good reason, because really! Dreams! She’d reached the point where she fretted for hours at a time over _dreams_. This was it. This was her life now.

Lady Lyarra of House Stark decided then and there that she _hated_ mysteries. Doubly so after her husband himself admitted even he was mainly assuming and guessing at that point. For a dark moment, she wanted to be angry at him. Resent him. Blame him for all the confusion in her life. But being petty was a quick way to end up dead in the mountains, and she wasn’t about to forget that lesson just because she lived in a castle now. She just wished she could throw aside her envy and jealousy the same way.

Then came and went the time when she should have gotten her moonblood and she had something completely different to fret over.

“How late are you, My Lady?” Maester Walys asked her when she went to him in his tower.

“A sennight now.”

“Any pains?”

“No more than usual.”

“Have you bled otherwise?”

“No.”

“I see. So far I see nothing out of the ordinary, at least not for _you_ , my Lady. Nonetheless, I would like to keep a close hand on this. Please see me as soon as you return from your journey.”

“You won’t tell anyone else, I hope? Either it’s nothing, or it’s something and I want it to be surprise.”

“My Lady, as always when it doesn’t run counter to my patient’s health, my lips are sealed.”

She did her best not to hope. Or worry. Or jump to conclusions and otherwise behave such that it would give her away. It was easier than it had been the past few years, which was a mixed blessing. Ever since she had Benjen, her times had been fickle. So had her moonpains. And not always in the same way either.

She soon had her mind taken off that as well. The day prior to their departure, Brandon asked to see them in their chambers early in the morning. Fortunately, he wasn’t so early that he interrupted their personal time. They got dressed quickly and sat next to each other on the edge of their bed to receive him.

“I bring gifts!” Her son grandly proclaimed. He accepted a satchel from his guard – a large one – and waited for Martyn Cassel to bring Rickard’s chair over before he dismissed him and climbed on it. Then he pulled out and gave them each a box. They were solid, pretty things made of varnished redwood, hinged at the back and closed at the front with one of those new ratcheting clasps her son loved so much. “Behold, the grooming kit!”

They each opened their box to reveal a truncated interior padded with cotton wool lined with black velvet. They were entirely filled with items, many of which she was unfamiliar with. Seeing one of those horsehair toothbrushes her son prayed to so often wasn’t all that startling, nor were the scissors, but the jar next to them was a surprise, filled with what he called toothpaste.

“Don’t tell anyone but it’s just sea salt mixed with water and oil from lemon crust,” Brandon said. “Mint works too though, if we ever want to trade it.”

There was a lot more in the case. Scented soap that smelled like blue roses, a hair comb, a hair brush, twenty leather hair ties. From there things stopped being so familiar. Even the ones that seemed obvious in hindsight. The nail clipper proved its weight in gold immediately, once Rickard proved his usual prompt self in testing it. Clip, clip, clip went the wolf’s rough claws. The safety pins also seemed terribly useful. Lyarra Stark seriously wondered why no one had come up with them before. There was even what looked like a small collapsible rake but which her son cheekily introduced as an extendable backscratcher.

“Now _everyone_ will have to scratch mine back!” 

Then there were the things her son thought were only suited for a woman, as opposed to those meant for a man. The headband was nothing she’d never seen before, but she couldn’t say the same about the pincers or the _tiny_ pair of scissors, let alone the nail file. The explanation for the first two made her blush. The last left her scandalised. A sharpening stone for her nails! Madness! The snap hair clips, though, she might have called the cleverest of everything if not for the last thing. A second jar to go with the first.

“Hair wash?”

“Aye. It’s made of water, soap, lavender oil, rosemary oil, chamomile oil and beer.”

How did her son come up with these things?

Brandon smiled wryly, reading the thoughts on her face. “I only dreamed up the recipe. The men and women who worked on it are the ones who deserve the praises. Incidentally, they’ve also begged to keep it a trade secret.” He looked at his father then. “We might want to come up with an invention record of some sort before guilds start seeping up from the south to choke us all.”

“You don’t say,” Rickard said dryly, inspecting his own gift. “When did you even have time for all this? There’s barely any time in the day when you’re out of my sight.”

Brandon snorted. “I didn’t do shit. I just wrote and sketched a few papers. Martyn’s the one who went and made everything happen. I’m told he had to push and prod and soothe the egos of a _lot_ of jealous craftsmen for this, so please criticise thoroughly.”

“So that’s why he came asking about boundaries of confidence. It wasn’t about his leeway, it was about yours.” Rickard examined what had to be the strangest razor ever dreamed up. It looked like a tiny flat shovelhead with the handle sticking out the broad side rather than the edge. There were spare blades too. Astonishingly thin. Lyarra couldn’t guess how they were supposed to be mounted in. Rickard eventually put it down and moved to something else. “What’s this?” he asked, indicating one of _three_ jars, rather than two.

“Soap and olive oil plus extract of cloves kept at a low boil in water. Otherwise known as shaving cream.” Brandon made a strangely conflicted face then. “To be honest, I’d rather you didn’t use it.”

“Oh?”

“… Your beard is the best.”

Lyarra had to cover her laughter.

“Is that so?” Rickard asked, enjoying his son’s embarrassment. “And here I’d thought this was for our soon to be hosts.”

“Oh no, theirs are back in my room and the cases aren’t half as fancy. These are all for you. Anyway,” Brandon hastily changed the subject. “ _This_ should hopefully suit you better.” Brandon leaned it to grab a small bottle of green glass and held it in the window light. “Almond and rosemary oils. The best mix of all the ones immediately available, I’ve been assured. I call it beard polish. May I?”

Rickard peered at his son for a long moment but nodded slowly and leaned close.

Brandon uncorked the bottle, poured a small amount in his hand and set about carefully kneading it through his father’s beard, pulling and tugging and straightening it for several minutes. Lyarra kept silent so as not to distract them. Rickard had once tried to use some Essosi import, but it tasted foul and rubbed off too easily on everything – especially _her_ – so he soon gave up on the idea. Now, as she watched his face literally transform before her eyes, she found herself hoping this wouldn’t end the same.

Once he was done, Brandon wiped his hands on a cloth. “What do you plan to wear today?”

Rickard’s eyebrows flew upwards but he told him.

Nodding, her son then reached into the case and picked out what turned out to be hair clasps. There were twenty in total, five each of bronze, iron, steel and wood carved with their house crest at the front. He chose three of the first and used them to anchor Rickard’s now well-groomed beard in three wide queues, the longest in the middle. Lyarra could already see all five or more of the rest find their own places in that tableau, if her husband ever decided to let his beard grow further. Which, she thought upon seeing the intense gaze he’d locked on Brandon, was probably a given now.

“Where did you get the bottle?”

Brandon started.

Rickard’s gaze sharpened and he did one of the things he disliked the most. He repeated himself. “Where did you get the bottle, son?”

“… I suppose this is the time to mention the North has glassblowers as of yesterday?”

Lyarra Stark suddenly experienced the strange urge to facepalm. She didn’t. She at least was enough a lady not to lapse that far. It was a very close thing though.

Her husband, on the other hand, pinched his nosebridge, took a deep breath, stood up, picked Brandon off the chair, set him on the floor, knelt down and embraced him. Tight. Long. Long enough for the snow shrikes outside to trill the last chimes of their dawn chorus.

Eventually, Rickard let go but didn’t pull back. He instead laid his hands on his son’s shoulders and let his brow rest on his. Brandon… didn’t stiffen or shrink in embarrassment like Ned might have. He didn’t preen like Benjen would have. He didn’t gloat either, like Lyanna would have done. Instead he… eased. Loosened. Relaxed into a deep, fervent sort of contentment that Lyarra had seldom ever seen, and never so heartfelt.

Watching them, she couldn’t help but feel a jealous pang. Seven years she stood by her son through every hardship and frenzy and fit of madness while Rickard shunned them both. And now the man swoops in and fixes everything in a single moonturn. Did Rickard even know his son now? What did dreams count for, really? Did he know what he liked to eat? To drink? Did he know that he’d mused on and off about an obstacle course to run each day in the mornings? Or that Brandon’s favourite way to have fun was skulking around in that quiet way of his and peer around corners from half-way up to the ground, scaring every scullery maid that passed by? Surely not!

She had a favourite, Lyarra Stark thought wanly. And now it seemed she knew what her punishment was for it. Her son also had a favourite. He had a favourite and it wasn’t her.

“I’m proud of you, son.” Rickard said, as if he hadn’t already won every last drop of his son’s undying awe and admiration and love and devotion and - “But if Myrish assassins come after you in a few years, I will be very upset.” What’s this, now? “Or are you going to claim you somehow _don’t_ also know the secret to clear glassblowing?”

“Oh Myr’s whole schtick is such _bullshit!_ ” Brandon burst out of nowehere, backing off and throwing his hands in the air. “Glass is literally just sand, ash and lime! You just mix them up and melt them in a kiln. Martyn barely finished listing the ingredients before working mixes were being thrown around by five different people, to hear him say it. And the best one didn’t even come from a builder or smith or even a jeweller. It was a _farmer_. You know, the one whose wife randomly came up with a pressure cooker while we were working with her smith brother on the aluminium smelter? Half the night spent walking back the old dream lane for the details, wasted. And there’s no clear glass _blowing_ , it’s all in the materials. I don’t know _all_ the finicky ingredients if you want glass clear and smooth enough for mirrors or lenses, but that’s just if you’re working with shit sand and ash to begin with, and even _Walys_ should be able to figure those out!” Brandon then went on a long, ranting spiel about monopolies, iron impurities, the Free Cities scamming everyone on glass tinting, and how Dorne was either fucking with the rest of the world or filled with nothing but morons if they didn’t have their own glass production after so much time in the sand. “The worst thing is I can’t even hold it against the Myrish,” Brandon finally said. Growled, almost. “If you’ve got a valuable product, of course you’ll want to make it a trade secret!”

“Well now,” Rickard said once Brandon finally wound down, nonplussed. “You seem to have strong feelings about this.”

“You think!?”

“Do not snap at me, son.”

Unless it suits your father to let you divulge every last one of your latest and greatest accomplishments, Lyarra thought crossly.

Her son seemed to remember whose presence he was in, though, finally. He took a few of his strange, staggered deep breaths to master himself. “Right. I’m sorry, Father. I apologise.”

“Forgiven. Now is there anything else you’d like to share that you might be harbouring strong feelings about?”

“… I don’t know, the hair wash maybe? There’s an ingredient the tradesmen could only get from olive oil – a cook figured it out actually – and we barely import enough of that for special occasions. I don’t suppose you have contacts across the sea that can ask about alternatives? Say a bean that only grows in Yi Ti, maybe? Your jar’s made with cedar instead of lavender by the way, apparently.”

“That I can do, though it will have to wait until spring for obvious reasons.”

Brandon, who’d resumed the pacing he’d devolved into mid-way through his tirade, stopped and looked at his father in surprise. “Wait, really?”

“You have my permission to visit the dreams of the Company of the Rose sometime,” Rickard said dryly. “We also rule half the continent, son, and have a legion of traders. I really shouldn’t have to explain this. Anything else?”

“… I suppose there’s two things.” Brandon went to the satchel and pulled out… four copper plaques. Two had the direwolf sigil of their house emblazoned. The other two did not. “I thought to put the names of the makers on the lid.” Rickard accepted one and Lyarra took the other to inspect more closely. It had a pair of names cast with an odd symbol in between. Luwys & Hus. Below them was written ‘Made in Winterfell’. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s rather sweet,” Lyarra said. And she meant it.

“… I think you’ve started something significant,” Rickard eventually agreed after thinking on his answer. “We’ll honour the makers.”

“Great!” To their surprise, Brandon then produced the thinnest and sharpest chisel she’d ever seen, which he then used to fasten the plaques on the spot with nails that, rather than being beaten in, instead spun and sunk into the wood on twisting treads.

Rickard stared at their son, picked up one of the “I call them screws!” to inspect, stared at it for far too long a time while turning it between his fingers, then leaned back and literally looked to the heavens for strength. Considering that was the opposite direction of where their Gods made their place, nothing else need be said on the matter.

“Oh come on, Dad! It’s not like it’s anything new,” Brandon groused. “It’s what we use in fruit presses. It’s not my fault no one bothered to make them small before. I bet everyone in the Free Cities is laughing at us. I don’t even want to think about Yi Ti.”

“Never mind,” Rickard grunted. “Just get whatever’s left out of the way before I change my mind.”

“Fine,” Brandon huffed. “Maybe we should just rip it off like a scab. Fair warning though, it might just be the biggest decision of your lives. I know bringing it up at all is going to be the biggest decision of mine.”

Lyarra suddenly felt deeply concerned about what was about to follow. The feeling only increased as Brandon took a deep breath and had to physically, visibly resolve himself to –

“Should I put a razor and shaving cream in the woman kit too?”

For a terrible moment, Lady Lyarra of House Stark couldn’t understand what she’d just heard. Then she did. “Wha-! Well I never!”

“Yeow!” Brandon barely ducked out of the way of the pillow she threw at him to hide behind his father. “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

“Think that was funny, do you!?” The woman hissed. She lunched around her husband. And when that failed, she grabbed her pillow from the floor and threw it again. Rickard managed to lean away in time, but Brandon had long since jumped on the bed to hide behind him again. “Come here you-you… you miscreant!”

“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” Brandon howled. Then he lunged across the room, threw her pillow back in her face – the outrage! – and dashed out the door laughing like the devil she’d spent years trying to convince herself he wasn’t. In vain, as it now turned out. “You’ll never take me alive!”

“You won’t escape me you little monster!” She hollered after him in the most un-lady like display of her married life. “I’ll get you back for this, mark my words!”

A truly alien sound appeared then. One she’d only ever heard once in the past seven years, back at the fair. Her husband. Laughing. More freely, loudly and uproariously than ever before. And he didn’t stop until he was good and ready, the brute. Because why should he care about her feelings? He was only her husband. Lyarra huffed, tossed her hair, turned away from him, went to her vanity and proceeded to make herself ready for the day while pretending her husband didn’t exist.

She didn’t last a minute. Once she heard him start picking things out of his newest gift, she shifted in her seat despite herself to watch his reflection. Then she gave it up as a bad job and turned enough to watch him properly.

Rickard took out the items he’d chosen, closely handled them for a minute or two each as if to memorise their feel, then he took off the beard clasps his son had so affectionately put in. After that, he went to their wash basin, washed his face with the scented soap, brushed his teeth with a generous serving of paste, and spent an equal amount of time cleaning every nook and cranny of his mouth he could reach. The foam made an ugly spectacle of him, and it ruined whatever grooming hadn’t already washed away with the water. But Rickard cleaned himself off once more, faithfully oiled his beard all over again, and then found a way to secure it with not three but all five of the bronze clasps he’d been given. Even without his crown, he looked like the King of Winter come again.

Then he turned around, strode to her, pulled her out of her seat and gave her the longest, fiercest, stormiest, fieriest, most toe-curling kiss Lyarra Stark had ever received in her life. The skin on his face felt smooth as marble, his beard was like steel wire wrapped up in silk, his tongue tasted like ice straight from the sea, and his breath was akin to the coolest wind beating down from the mountaintops.

When he pulled away she was left light-headed, and all her attempts to say anything ended in moans and whimpers, damn him.

“Was that to your liking, wife?”

“You’re the worst,” Lyarra gasped. Plaintively. “You know it was.”

“Good.” Rickard abruptly let go of her, walked away, sat on his chair and gazed expectantly as her mind failed its first few tries to catch up what he then said. “Now live up to your man’s example, woman.”

When she finally did, she gaped at him, affronted. “Well I never!” She was lost for words as well, it seemed.

Her husband crossed his arms and beheld her, completely unimpressed.

So just to be petty, she turned her nose at him and stormed out of the room in her nightrobe. She’ll just get her maids and prepare for the day in her old chambers, let’s see him posture then!

She would never find the words to describe the torture that she went through that whole day. When she ordered the servants not to serve Brandon anything but bland porridge, Rickard summoned him for an errand with promises of jerky and mulled wine to go. When she went down to the cellars to check for some of that new maple syrup, her husband and son didn’t even seem to notice her pointed dismissal of them both as she passed the training yard. When dinner came and Brandon goggled at Benjen’s humming of something or other instead of showing even a token fear at her gimlet eye, she felt fit to tie him up and shave all _his_ hair off. And whenever her eyes strayed to her husband, Rickard was already watching her. Always. Waited until she turned to meet his eyes and then smirked at her.

Curse this fate, curse her man, and curse the Gods for landing her in the only marriage in the world where the woman was the more wanton one.

That night she bathed in blue roses, washed her hair in lavender, cleaned her mouth with lemon salt, spent far too long tending to her hands, and then surrendered to the longest, hardest, most ardent night of lovemaking of her entire life. Then the morning came and she did it all over again.

The snowstorm that welcomed them once they emerged from their chambers threatened to ruin it all. It thinned and stopped completely before even noon came, but she didn’t need to ride out to know all roads would be snowed in. But her husband had been working on projects of his own too. Most importantly, a sledhouse. It forced them to leave most of their retinue and supplies behind, but what few sled dogs they had proved sufficient to bear them hence. The Cerwyns were very surprised that afternoon when they arrived, pulled forth by hounds and bracketed by Winterfell’s ski detachment.

Then they attended the fair and learned a common lumberjack had stumbled upon a find that outdid every one of her son’s combined.

Brandon’s madness had already caught outside Winterfell, Lyarra thought testily.

She should have expected it really.


	11. The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (III)

"-. 273 AC .-"  


Castle Cerwyn was a fortress located half a day’s ride to the southwest of Winterfell on the northern bank of the Wolfsriver, the western branch of the White Knife that flowed eastward from Crofter’s Village. The castle wasn’t nearly as large as Winterfell would have been, even had Bran the Builder not insisted on building it around a three-acre forest. But it still had two walls of thirty and forty feet in height, eight towers fifty feet tall each, and a keep big enough to comfortably house their family, servants and garrison, while also leaving room enough for visiting peers and their retinues. Being practical folk, older Cerwyn generations had even set aside apartments in their keep that were every bit the equal of the Lord’s chambers, so that the hosts wouldn’t need to upend themselves every time their liege came down for a visit. Alas, the current Cerwyn generation had, very understandably in Lyarra’s opinion, assumed their liege wouldn’t make it to the fair. Which they had probably considered a blessing, considering the sight that met them on arrival.  
  
When their sledhouse crested from the north, men were well into the task of dismantling what tents hadn’t completely been blown apart. Along with what stalls and flagpoles hadn’t been totalled by winter’s fury. The only things that hadn’t broken down were the few handful of snow huts they skid by on their way to the gatehouse. Things weren’t much better in Angler’s Den, the village set along the Kingsroad to the east of the Keep – alleys were snowed over, fences were askew and even roofs were damaged here and there, all the way to where the village stopped at the river bank proper.  
  
However quick in passing on, the snowstorm had struck Cerwyn as badly as it had Winterfell.  
  
“My Lord and Lady, we were certain you wouldn’t make it,” Lord Robard said as he knelt before them. “Cerwyn is yours. Had we known you’d brave the snows, we’d have redoubled our preparations instead.”  
  
“Rise. It is no matter.” Rickard said. “The fault for not sending a raven is mine. And greetings to you also, Lady Sera. Your son is not here?”  
  
“Welcome to our home, and he is not far, My Lord.”  
  
“He is overseeing the clean-up efforts to the south of the village,” Robard answered as he motioned for bread and salt. “I have, of course, already sent out orders that fair preparations be resumed immediately. Unfortunately, the new Winterfell Wonders will likely be in very short supply even so. Kites, airplanes and sky lamps in particular I am ashamed to say. What wood pulping vats we’d managed to set up were among the worst hit.”  
  
They talked on the way into the castle, with Lord Robard proving fairly reluctant to expound beyond that one admission. He didn’t want to seem as if he was complaining, Lyarra assumed. And perhaps he was wary of sounding as if he minded their presence, when he was the one who invited them to begin with.  
  
“I see,” Rickard said eventually. “It can’t be helped. I will go with you and you will tell me about the expenses on the way. I will cover half the losses.”  
  
“You are most generous, My Lord.” Robard seemed torn between joy that the fair would go on – with the accompanying rise in smallfolk happiness and spending, some of whom had come from other villages – and embarrassment that he needed his liege to come and save the day.  
  
Lyarra left them to it and excused herself to go get settled in with the children, except Brandon whom Rickard was resolved to have nearby even now. She didn’t catch sight of them again until the evening feast, when Lady Sera personally led her, Ned, Lyanna and Benjen to their seats in the Great Hall. They sat left of Rickard. Her husband was already at the center of the table with Robard on his right when they arrived. The Stark guards had already mixed with the Cerwyn guard force among the lower tables as well.  
  
Lyarra Stark relished the chance to indulge in a feast without having to worry about anything remotely related to responsibility. Trusting her children to behave themselves – Rickard and Brandon were on the opposite end of the table so the little ones couldn’t fight for their attention as they usually did – she availed herself of the foodstuffs. Fresh-baked bread, venison stew and beef-and-bacon pie were followed by cod cakes and buns with raisins, dried apples, and pine nuts. She briefly considered trying some of the honeyed chicken as well, but she decided against it when she saw the last dish. It was the spiced roast that Brandon had dreamed up a few years ago. Lyarra hadn’t expected Lord Robard to have kept it in mind among so many other things he’d been bombarded with during his visit, but she was glad for it. It had rather spoiled her when it came to poultry. It consisted of heavily salted and spiced chicken soaked in sunflower oil and set in a baking pan affixed with a thin wooden bottom. The pan would then be covered with a holed lid made of tin and left to cook inside an oven for three to five hours, suspended a palm’s width above the embers. Her son had come up with it after his rather amusing reaction to the honeyed chicken aforementioned. Which was to say, he couldn’t stand it. Or anything resembling sweet meat.  
  
Lyara immediately served herself two drumsticks and a breast and took a bite for taste. As she expected, the cooks had held back on the salt and spices, underestimating the softening effect the meat’s own steam would have on the flavour. Still, they’d done well enough with the pepper powder and hadn’t taken the pan too early off the fire, so it was better than fine. They had been very generous with the garlic as well. Very generous indeed.  
  
Her pleasant fugue of feeding and talking of womanly things – Lady Sera had been _very_ intrigued by their gifts and was a font of questions and appreciation about the many utensils – was abruptly shattered by Lyanna launching a clump of wheat cream from her spoon at Medger Cerwyn’s face.  
  
The mix of ground wheat, butter and honey came to an abrupt stop against Brandon’s trencher. “What’s this?” Brandon said, turning from his conversation. “Is Lyanna Stark being a brat once more? Say it ain’t so!”  
  
“I knew it!” Lyanna crowed in triumph. “You _do_ have eyes in the back of your head!”  
  
“And in front,” Brandon said. “And above, below, to the left, to the right and everything in between. Everywhere. All the time.” Brandon gave the trencher to a nearby servant to pass to the smallfolk outside. “My eyes are always there. Invisible. Watching you.”  
  
“Well poo!” Lyanna sniffed. “Don’t talk about boring stuff then!”  
  
“I’m so sorry my concerns are not to your taste, my lady,” Medger said, not sounding sorry at all. “What might my lady prefer, seeing as she hates romance?”  
  
“I do not!” Lyanna balked, affronted.  
  
“Ignore her,” Brandon told the man. “She’s just delusional.”  
  
“I am not!”  
  
“Sit _down_ daughter,” Lyarra commanded, pushing the girl back on the bench. “Here, have some honeyed milk and leave the men to their mannish talk.”  
  
“But mom, he actually wants to be married! To a _lady!_ ”  
  
“And that’s terrible,” Lyarra said woodenly.  
  
“Don’t tell me, tell _them_!”  
  
“Lyanna,” Ned said. “You have a stain on your dress.”  
  
“What? Where?”  
  
Saved by girlish hypocrisy, Lyarra thought. She smiled fondly at Ned and turned back to Lady Sera, though their prior topic had been very effectively thwarted. So she inquired after whatever matter was driving Brandon to so intently interrogate his increasingly bemused older peer. It turned out to be a betrothal. Or, rather, the drama surrounding one. Specifically, Medger’s suit towards one Taelya Forrester, the daughter of Lord Thorren Forrester. Being the second child and not a spare for Gregor, her father had apparently decided to let her have some say in her prospects. Which was to say, she got her pick from the list of young men he considered eligible for her.  
  
“That was two years ago,” Lady Sera concluded. “Since then, the pool has been whittled down to our Medger, who dearly wants the lady in question, and Galbart Glover, whom the lady herself wants on account of his musical skill. Only he’s pursuing his own suit for a different lady entirely, Sybelle Locke of Oldcastle.”  
  
Oh to be young and daft.  
  
“Don’t you all poke at just me,” Medger tossed in from his spot. “I’m not the one that made the initial overtures.”  
  
“Indeed,” Robard acknowledged. “But I keep telling you, son, a man is not meant to chase after women. He puts _himself_ on display and lets the ladies come to him!”  
  
Medger made a face but didn’t reply, as if he was too tired of a long recurring argument.  
  
“But I thought he didn’t get the chance to?” Brandon asked Lord Robard instead. “Parents are the one that set these things up, right? He didn’t do anything. Couldn’t do anything.”  
  
Robard seemed torn between annoyance at being questioned by a boy of ten name days, and the need to be courteous to his future liege lord. “At the _beginning_ perhaps, which couldn’t be helped, but since then things have-“  
  
“-Changed so that I’ll have to drop my suit,” Medger cut his father off with a finality Lyarra hadn’t expected.  
  
Lord Robard seemed taken aback as well, as if this were the first time he heard of this. “Now son, I didn’t mean you should give up.”  
  
“I’m not,” Medger said, picking at a bit of cheese. “I’m man enough to know when something’s out of my hands. And it is. It’s all in Galbart’s now, assuming he can get his head out of his arse enough to notice her.”  
  
“If she’ll only settle for you as sloppy seconds, maybe _she_ doesn’t deserve you.”  
  
Medger was quite thoroughly astonished by that defence of his character on Brandon’s part. Of the rest, Lyarra wasn’t sure who was more aghast at what her firstborn had just said. The only one who didn’t outwardly react in any way was her husband.  
  
Brandon ignored the poorly hidden eavesdropping of everyone in the hall. “Lady Sera. You said Lady Taelya is interested in Galbart Glover for his skill at music.”  
  
Lady Cerwyn pursed her lips, but answered once she noticed Rickard looking expectantly in her direction. “… Just so. He is not a particularly gifted singer, but he can at least hold a tune, and he does play the fiddle as well.”  
  
“Well there you go,” Brandon said, turning to Medger again. “Sing for her.”  
  
The young man snorted and began serving himself some cod cake. “That’ll be the day. I can’t sing for shit.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Brandon said. “Everyone can sing.”  
  
“If everyone could sing, everyone would be a bard.”  
  
“Perfect pitch is the _least_ of what a bard needs. Eddard!”  
  
“I’m here, brother.”  
  
“Tell me the bard’s prerequisites.”  
  
“A bard needs to be passionate enough to focus on music above everything else, wealthy or lucky enough to afford life-long lessons and instruments, he needs exceptional memory to _remember_ his songs, he needs the charisma to persuade bandits and thieves to let him play along instead of robbing him, and most of all, he needs to be that tiniest bit _mad_. Mad enough to think he can make his entire living off songs to begin with.”  
  
The entire hall seemed to have fallen quiet. Even the minstrel in the corner.  
  
“Beware,” Lyanna intoned, wanting to prove she was just as good as her siblings at Brandon’s games of fancy. “Beware the Bard Prince and the Minstrel King. Charming or not, they’re probably insane.” Then she looked at Benjen and they both burst into childish laughter.  
  
The feast seemed to pick up again but the normal attention paid by everyone in the hall to those at the main table had shifted target.  
  
“Medger,” Brandon called suddenly. “The Bear and the Maiden Fair. The first trine. Sing it for me.”  
  
“What-?“  
  
“Now.”  
  
Medger Cerwyn gaped at the small boy, affronted, but then closed his mouth, scowled and obeyed. Just like that, he obeyed.  
  
 _A bear there was, a bear, a bear!  
All black and brown, and covered with hair.  
The bear! The bear!”_  
  
Lyarra forced herself not to grimace. It… wasn’t the worst rendition she’d ever heard, but that was all the good she could say about it. Few seemed to differ with her on that opinion.  
  
Brandon just nodded thoughtfully though, then said. “Benjen! Same song, trine one.”  
  
Lyarra turned to her youngest son, astounded.  
  
 _A bear there was, a bear, a bear!  
All black and brown, and covered with hair.  
The bear! The bear!_  
  
Lyarra Stark stared at her youngest, scandalised. Then she turned to glare at Brandon. How could he? How could he teach his small brother such a ribald song? The nerve of her children!  
  
Then Brandon took over and sung the second and third strophes all by himself.  
  
 _Oh come they said, oh come to the fair!  
The fair? Said he, but I'm a bear!  
All black and brown, and covered with hair!  
  
And down the road from here to there.  
From here! To there!  
Three boys, a goat and a dancing bear!  
They danced and spun, all the way to the fair!  
The fair! The fair!_  
  
As usual, his rendition was flawless and only failed to achieve perfection because of his high, childlike voice.  
  
“Medger,” Brandon said in the ensuing silence. “Third stanza. Go.”  
  
The man blinked and seemed about to say something or other, but whatever he saw on Brandon’s face stopped him. Instead he leaned back and did as ordered again. With a lot more focus and care too.  
  
 _And down the road from here to there.  
From here! To there!  
Three boys, a goat and a dancing bear!  
They danced and spun, all the way to the fair!  
The fair! The fair!_  
  
Lyarra’s affront had to be put aside by surprise again. That… that had almost sounded acceptable _._  
  
“Just as I thought,” Brandon said, nodding to himself and ignoring the glances exchanged by people around him. “You’re not tone deaf at all. You can sing just fine, so long as you have a reference point. You just need practice.”  
  
“… You really are a well-meaning boy, aren’t you little lord,” Medger’s tone was as fond as it was wan. “But it’s not as easy as you make it sound. Unless you meant I should drag a bard everywhere I go so I have someone to start me off? May as well just let’em sing for me at that point.”  
  
“That’s not…” Brandon grimaced, then he leaned forward with his elbows on the table and rested his mouth on his clasped fingers, closing his eyes. “Let me think.”  
  
They let him think, and he sat there thinking quietly while they ate and talked and ate and talked some more until near the very end of the feast.  
  
“Lord Cerwyn. Father.” Brandon only spoke up when the last leftovers of the dessert were being carried off. “I would like to suggest a new contest.”  
  
“Later,” Rickard said, breaking off his quiet talk of business with Lord Cerwyn to answer his son as if he were expecting that all along. “When we’re in private. We wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”  
  
They retired in private, Brandon sketched out the challenge for his newest crafting contest and that was the last Lyarra heard about it for the two days until the fair proper. Though she did learn through Lady Sera that Rickard had ended up suggesting a second contest after some time watching Medger work on the wood pulp clean-up. Which, it turned out, was going _extremely_ poorly. To the point where they had decided to cut off the entire area. They’d expected to have to grind and sweep around snow and sawdust. Instead, the wood pulp and water had frozen solid. _Very_ solid.  
  
“It’s one, uneven, slippery mess and they’ve barely been able to chip at it. It doesn’t seem to crack at all, unlike normal ice. So far they’ve tried mining picks, hammers, sledgehammers, _warhammers_ , spears, swords and even Ice.” It took a moment for her to realize Rickard was referring to his sword. “I actually felt the effort on the last one. Robard decided they’d try hot water after we leave, if they bother at all. Might just be better to set up vats somewhere else and let spring sort out the mess when it comes.”  
  
“And you want people to do that _again_. During the fair?”  
  
“After what Brandon showed us we can do with measly snow?” Rickard shook his head. “I can’t even imagine what we could do with something stronger. I just wish I’d have thought of it myself. As it is, it took one of Medger’s workers to point out the obvious.”  
  
Thus did come the day of the fair, catered with various foods, supplied with some kites and streamers, and attended by many people generally indulging in everything Lyarra had participated in at home, if on a smaller scale. They’d not built a snow hall, but the central tent had firepits enough to warm by, whenever the chill got to them. The contests weren’t unusual either, but the people were enthusiastic. Lord Robard even took advantage of the nearby Godswood to oversee a few weddings for the smallfolk, one of whom was actually between the winners of the men’s and women’s contests. For all her protests that she’d never be a lady, Lyanna ate up the romance like honeycakes. The Lady Stark also thanked the Gods the Cerwyns seemed free of the madness that made her husband and son think it a good idea to make a public competition out of testing _siege weapons_. Really, contributing a little gold and maple syrup to the event wasn’t close to enough of a recompense for this display of good sense.  
  
Robard didn’t entirely agree with her on it. “This maple syrup makes me envious, My Lady. Such a clever find. Alas that we have so few of those trees on our lands. We’ve barely scrounged enough for one cauldron. Come to think of it though, House Whitehill has a lot of maples, don’t they? Maybe with this they’ll stop resenting the Forresters so much.”  
  
Lady Sera was not as complimentary. “Please. Why should the Forresters apologise for figuring out coppicing when they didn’t? If the Whitehills blame them to this day for them exhausting their _own_ ironwood supply, I doubt anything will make them see sense.”  
  
“Come now, wife. By this time next year we may be married into their rivalry. Don’t go ruining all my hopes at once.”  
  
That would be trouble come spring, Lyarra thought before turning back to her children. Ned and Benjen were rather dismayed at the lack of explosions, but only until their guards were roped into giving skiing lessons and rides on a few hastily assembled dog sleds. The only thing left to do was to find out if Brandon’s contest yielded whatever it was he wanted. Lyarra had seen him on one of the few times he went to this or that craftsman to test whatever those odd, two-pronged forks were supposed to be. But she couldn’t guess what he was doing, bumping them against table edges and then putting them next to his ear. Just what he was listening for in copper or iron, she had no idea.  
  
That was when the bits and blocks of ice and wood pulp came out and all of that was forgotten. Because it turned out neither she nor Rickard nor Brandon or even that peasant that started it all had grasped the enormity of what they had on their hands. And she wasn’t just talking about the fact that you could apparently make something strong as a rock, just as tough and ten times as light out of water and saw dust.  
  
“Hey father,” Medger Cerwyn said as he stared at the crystalline drum of… whatever it was called. Was it called anything? If they’d only just come up with it then- “Wasn’t that thing two thirds the size when starting out?”  
  
“Indeed it was,” Lord Robard said.  
  
“Hey father,” Brandon said next, staring at the same, smallest chunk out of all that had been put forward by the contestants. “Wasn’t that thing shining crystal blue until the clouds came out?”  
  
“Indeed it was,” Rickard said.  
  
“Hey mother,” Lyanna barged into the discussion as she always did. “Wasn’t that thing glowing pink and purple this morning?”  
  
“Indeed it was,” Lyarra said before she could check herself.  
  
“Lord Cerwyn,” Rickard interjected before anyone could say anything else in front of hundreds of curious smallfolk. “Have you ever played Gwent?”  
  
They used the pretext to retreat to the main tent and away from the inquiring gazes of the crowd. Rickard even went and laid out the cards and began teaching Robard the rules. Lyarra took that time to distract all but one of her children with sweet treats. All the while, nobody said a word.  
  
“Father,” Brandon eventually uttered a few games later, when events caught up to all of them and even Lord Robard proved unable to focus on the play anymore. “Our best farmland is south of the Wall, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yes, it is.”  
  
“Farmland that used to be covered in forests until the Long Night, wasn’t it?”  
  
“Yes, it was.”  
  
“Forests which were full of weirwoods.”  
  
“I dare say so.”  
  
“And there aren’t any stories that actually say where they all went _during_ the Pact, are there?”  
  
“No,” Rickard said, setting the cards down. “No there are not.”  
  
“Come to think of it, stories are kind of vague on how House Stark claimed the crown of _Winter_. Aren’t they?”  
  
“That they are, my son.”  
  
Nobody said a word for quite a while.  
  
“… My Lord Stark. Father,” Medger finally said, throat dry. “With your permission, I-“  
  
“Go. Bring the man here.”  
  
Medger Cerwyn went and returned with the object as well as the man who’d started all this. He turned out to be a large, burly lumberjack. He was also as white as chalk and incapable of standing upright once he was in their sight. ”M’lords, I swear I didn’t-!“  
  
“That thing you made,” Rickard said curtly. “What is it made of?”  
  
“M’lord, I swear I-“  
  
“Answer the question.”  
  
“It were just deadwood, m’lord, I swear! I respect the gods I do, I didn’t desecrate no God tree!”  
  
“Peace, goodman,” Lord Stark said. “You stand accused of nothing. Yet. Now tell me what you did. Every last step.”  
  
He did. And when he was done, they had him sit on a stump near the back of the tent while they decided what to do with that information.  
  
Ice and wood pulp. Six parts ice and one part wood pulp, Lyarra thought faintly. Didn’t matter what kind of pulp or sawdust. As long as the mix was right, you got a frozen material that was as strong as stone and just as tough. Apparently. It could also probably be repaired with just seawater, considering the way certain people up north maintained a certain something eerily similar which only ever seemed pale grey or dull white due to blown dirt. In reality, it shone blue and crystalline in sunlight, glimmered palely in moonlight, and glowed pink and purple at dawn.  
  
Lyarra Stark stared at the slowly, _too_ slowly melting chunk of not-ice. It sparkled from the melting in the light from the firepit with rivulets of water. It looked like it was weeping.  
  
Ice and wood pulp, Lyarra Stark thought. Ice and _Weirwood_ pulp.  
  
Suddenly Rickard nodded sharply and rose from his seat. “Brandon. Bring my sword.” Her son was surprised but obeyed as he should. Rickard spent the short time to his return quietly conferring with Lord Robard. Then he led them, the now terrified lumberjack and a steadily increasing trail of fair goes to the Godswood where several weddings had just been carried out.  
  
“Varr, son of Narr. Kneel.”  
  
“My lord, please-!” The man choked on his words when Medger squeezed his shoulder and pushed him forward.  
  
“Don’t talk. Just do as you’re told.”  
  
The man seemed fit to run for the hills, but the next moment he just seemed to break entirely. He got to his knees as ordered, bowing his head. Really, Lyarra thought waspishly. It was as if he’d somehow missed there wasn’t a block nearby for what he feared was about to happen!  
  
Rickard motioned for their son to approach, slowly pulled his immense sword out of the scabbard, lifted it high in the air, then brought it down to just above the man’s right shoulder. “For re-discovering the secret which Brandon the Builder used to build the Wall –“ the gathered people all gasped and then shut up as if struck dead and dumb “- I hereby elevate you to your own Masterly House.” The sword rose and settled again above the stupefied man’s other shoulder. “I name you Varr, first of your name of House Winterstone, and charge you with the protection and guidance of your territory and smallfolk in and around Silverpine Tower. Do you accept this honor?”  
  
“I… I…” Rickard waited patiently, his arm not wavering even once as his sword hovered just an inch above the man’s shoulder. “I… I accept?” But Rickard only waited further, so the man finally seemed to get a hold of himself, took a deep breath and said more firmly than he probably felt. “I accept, m’lord.”  
  
“Good. You will now swear your oaths. Repeat after me.”


	12. The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (IV)

## “-. 273 AC .-“

Lyarra Stark hadn’t expected to derive so much amusement out of watching the North’s newest noble stumble through his hapless introduction to highborn life. Or perhaps ‘confused flailing’ was a better thing to call it. The man had done little since his sudden elevation besides nodding jerkily and haltingly replying to Lord Cerwyn and her husband as they educated him on his new responsibilities and lands. Then came the closing feast, held in the grand hall with its doors open wide to give clear view of the sky lamps outside, hovering high in the air like sentries on both sides of the stairs and sloping path, tethered in place by flaxen strings. But the more her husband spoke, the less the newest nobleman seemed to even register them or anything besides. He instead looked fit to run away and hide under a rock in the woods.

“The forests in your territory are rather sparse, but re-planting and coppicing should see them grow back into something sustainable by the time your heirs are grown. There is a limestone quarry on your lands as well. It’s largely depleted but we’ve recently discovered that the scrap rock from limestone and dolostone can be smelted into an all-new metal suitable for many things. That should provide you with a solid income stream immediately, and the red clay waste can easily be turned to any number of building applications. What you sadly won’t have too much of is farmland, but we should have a solution for that as well, come spring. Even if it turns out to be sub-prime for food crops, you should be able to raise hemp just fine. Of course, a full prospecting will have to be done to know everything you do or don’t have available beyond these generalities. Do you know your letters and numbers?”

“… I can count to one hundred, m’lord,” the man said helplessly. “You gotta know how many logs everyone be wantin’, you see. But I can’t read or write none.”

“You’ll have to learn then. You and yours will come to Winterfell to be educated on everything you need. That is, if your new lord agrees?”

“We have the means and a Maester of course,” Robard said. “But if House Stark has even more Winterfell Wonders to be doling out, best if he goes learn it all from the horse’s mouth so to speak.”

Oh if only he knew the name of that horse, Lyarra thought with a hidden smile. Wait, where was Brandon? He still hadn’t shown up, and neither had his guard. Come to think of it, Medger seemed to be missing as well.

“House Stark will match what starting funds house Cerwyn provides, and you can expect various gifts from the other noble houses once you throw your inauguration feast. I suggest waiting for spring to maximise attendance,” Rickard was saying. “That said, more coin can be made available as investment on top of the knowledge and techniques I just described, to be returned as a percentage of the income of whatever enterprises are financed with them. But such things can be discussed once you’ve been properly armed for such talks. Now eat and drink. We wouldn’t want our newest Master to come out of a feast still hungry.”

That would be the day, Lyarra thought. She still wasn’t sure the new Master Winterstone would be able to rise without help at all, given how unsteady the man’s legs had gotten from sheer shock by the time Rickard and Robard sat him down at the high table between them. Admittedly, that had proven fortunate in a way. It eliminated all chances of the _earlier_ scene being repeated, when the man barely made it to a bench after being ennobled and was promptly charged and embraced desperately by a heavily pregnant woman. The North’s all-newest dame now sat next to their lady host doing a fair impression of a shy wallflower. She was another surprise for everyone involved, though for Lyarra herself it was secondary to Lady Sera’s approach to the situation. Which is to say, the Lady Cerwyn immediately took charge of the young woman and spent the hours leading up to the feast bathing her and dressing her and fussing over her appearance and proving she owned _far_ too many pregnancy gowns for a woman who’d only ever had the one child. Lyarra decided not to mention all the things she read into that.

She also held back from speculating on how severe a boredom Lady Sera must be suffering from, to so tightly latch onto this unexpected distraction. Lyarra didn’t remember her being particularly invested in the smallfolk. Then again, there could be a lot of soft prestige in mentoring the wife of the person who rediscovered the secret to Bran the Builder’s greatest accomplishment. Or half of it, depending on how much magic may or may not otherwise have contributed to the making of the Wall.

Lyarra would wish Sera luck if she hadn’t just learned it would be her job to get her trained up. She hoped Lady Della was just overwhelmed rather than timid. After the last seven years, Lyarra was far too weary of coaxing others out of their shell. It was a tiresome skill, and she’d never been particularly adept at it to begin with.

That was when Medger Cerwyn finally entered the hall, and while he looked normal enough, the lute he was carrying was out of the ordinary for him. More curious to Lyarra, though, was the sight of her eldest son trailing the man, carrying what looked like a stack of papers in one hand and a bunch of wooden sticks under the arm. Medger eschewed the high table entirely, going instead to the spot where the minstrel had been playing his tunes all evening. He quietly conferred with the spindly man, who then backed off with a bow.

Medger then sat down on the minstrel’s chair, set his lute on one knee and waited for Brandon to set up what turned out to be a small tripod stand for the stack of papers he’d brought along. When he was done, the papers were at eye-level with the sitting man and Brandon, after looking around for a seat and not finding one, chose to step back and sit right there on the ground. Then he pulled a two-pronged fork from his trouser pocket.

Pockets. Another thing her son refused to leave home without, Lyarra thought absently. He disdained belt pouches for some reason. He’d expressed to her in no uncertain terms that clothing without pockets sewn in was worthless because no, the ones in his cloak’s inner lining weren’t nearly enough and Maester Walys’ pocket-dappled inner sleeves obviously agreed with him.

Brandon motioned for Medger to do something or other. So the man did. From where Lyarra sat, it almost seemed like he wasn’t doing anything except looking at the paper in front of whim while tilting his head. But then Brandon made a ‘so-so’ gesture with his hand, and she realised from the way his throat moved that he was probably humming the starting tunes to prepare himself. That was as much as she understood though. Brandon then knocked his odd fork against the leg of Medger’s chair and held it up near his ear right after. Then, when the man hummed again, Brandon nodded in satisfaction and held up a thumb.

Medger then began to pluck the cords of the lute. It was a simple, repeating tune, but it sounded pleasing to the ear. And when the man actually started to sing a song she’d never heard before, Lyarra Stark was surprised that his voice sounded pleasing to her ear as well.

[Are you going to Winterfell Fair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnUIe-eIup0)?

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Remember me to one who lives there

For she once was a true love of mine

Tell her to make me a Dornish shirt

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Without any seam nor needlework

And then she'll be a true love of mine

Tell her to wash it in yonder dry well

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Which never sprung water nor rain ever fell

And then she'll be a true love of mine

Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Which never bore blossom since First Man was born

And then she'll be a true love of mine

Ask her to do me this courtesy

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

And ask for a like favour from me

And then she'll be a true love of mine

Have you been to Winterfell Fair?

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Remember me from one who lives there

For he once was a true love of mine

Ask him to find me an acre of land

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Between the salt water and the sea-sand

For then he'll be a true love of mine

Ask him to plough it with a lamb's horn

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

And sow it all over with one peppercorn

For then he'll be a true love of mine

Ask him to reap it with a sickle of leather

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

And gather it up with a rope made of heather

For then he'll be a true love of mine

When he has done and finished his work

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Ask him to come for his Dornish shirt

For then he'll be a true love of mine

If you say that you can't, then I shall reply

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Oh, let me know that at least you will try

Or you'll never be a true love of mine

Love imposes impossible tasks

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

But none more than any heart would ask

I must know you're a true love of mine

When the song was over, Lyarra was pleasantly surprised to find herself joining in the applause and cheers without any artifice. The song was slow and meandering, but had endearingly absurd lyrics for all that. More importantly, the young man had actually done a good job of holding the right tune throughout, and never missed a word or line even though he obviously didn’t have them memorised, relying instead on Brandon turning the page at the right time. Her son never failed to do just that. There _were_ two or three points where Medger seemed to veer into a wrong note. But then Brandon would knock on wood with his fork and hold it to the man’s ear again like some sort of magic wand, and Medger would regain his flow and hold it longer and longer until he hit the last third of the song and didn’t need any more help at all.

As a smug Brandon Stark and blithesome Medger Cerwyn picked up after themselves and finally came forth to take their seats at the high table, Lyarra watched her son and what may already be his most loyal subject. She wondered where the song came from. Wondered if they knew the significance of the words. The one line that repeated throughout. The meanings she could trace back to ancient lore and stories from Old Nan, where parsley removed bitter feelings, sage granted wisdom and inner strength, rosemary symbolised love and fidelity, and thyme conveyed the greatest strength of conviction in matters of the heart.

She also wondered if she should ask what sort of wager Brandon must have surely roped Medger into, for the man to risk making a spectacle of himself had this gone poorly.

She decided not to inquire after the former in case Brandon’s dreams were the source of the song, which would lead to far too many questions for there and now. She asked about the latter instead.

“Oh, I wagered I could make it so he didn’t need a bard along to start him off,” Brandon said smugly as he served himself one of everything. He was eating more normal amounts now, Lyarra was glad to see. “Obviously, I won.”

“So you made a magic wand?” Benjen asked in wonder.

“Ha!” Brandon laughed and shook his head, pulling out the fork-shaped item. He knocked it against the edge of the table and reached over both Ned and Lyanna to hold it close to Benjen’s ear. And since Lyarra was sat right next to him, she leaned close to listen as well, the same as her other children. She was granted the sound of the smoothest, clearest note she’d ever heard that didn’t come from someone’s mouth.

Lyarra straightened and looked at her son, astounded.

Her son could make steel _sing_.

“This,” Brandon said grandly once the note finally faded to silence, “is a tuning fork. Nothing magic about it.”

“So _he_ says,” grunted Medger as he ravenously bit into his roast pork. “I’m still not sure I believe him.”

Brandon ignored him. As well as everyone else listening in, which was the entire high table and then some. “One of the copper ones turned out right too, but it can’t sing as long and the pitch is lower. Not a great reference point for vocals. Well, unless you’re an Umber with the voice of a bear which would be _awesome_ , but alas, is not the case for us. It should be great for tuning string instruments though.”

From the corner of her eye, Lyarra caught Robard Cerwyn looking strangely in Brandon’s direction, and then between him and Rickard before turning away to quietly mutter something or other. Lyarra was no lip reader, but if the words “Winterfell” and “Wonders” weren’t included in whatever it was, she’d eat Lady Sera’s entire collection of pregnancy dresses.

That could be trouble.

They ended the feast on a high note, so to speak. Lord Robard Cerwyn held a speech, Lord Paramount Rickard Stark added a few words to end the festivities, and the fair closed under the orange light of sky lamps and bonfires with much good-natured jeering and backslapping of the newest Master by his smallfolk family and friends.

The Starks left for Winterfell the very next day, with thanks and good wishes from the Cerwyns and a promise on Rickard’s part to send the sledhouse back for the Winterstones to make the journey north without delay. But even that didn’t go by without Brandon disrupting it somehow. At this point Lyarra was becoming resigned to it. She still wished her son hadn’t chosen to do it through something so blatantly preposterous though. Medger Cerwyn’s words upon being presented with the two full dozen pages covered in “everything you need to learn and collect every last song ever” quite aptly summarised her state of mind.

“You made a language for music?”

Her son did what now?

“I didn’t make shit. Some guy came up with it whose name I can’t remember, then he died,” Brandon said as if he weren’t even trying to be subtle. “I have a pretty long memory these days, don’t you know.” The sheer preposterousness of his words seemed to belatedly dawn on him. “And I had nothing to do with it! He was way before my time.” Correction: it dawned on him in precisely the wrong way, Lyarra thought exasperatedly. “Now remember: practice, practice, practice and do _not_ sing outside your vocal range. If singing makes your throat tired or raw, you’re doing it wrong and should stop immediately.”

The young man seemed absolutely stunned. “… You made _a language for music_ ” Medger Cerwyn looked incredulously between the papers and her son. The man spoke with all the bitter resignation of a man who’d just realized he’d live all that remained of his life in the shadow of his betters. Then he begged off to confer quietly with his father some ways off. Over the next couple of minutes, Lyarra Stark got to see Robard Cerwyn turning increasingly astounded at whatever Medger was saying, and from the way they gesticulated it barely had anything to do with Brandon’s latest fancy at all. At least directly. Whatever it was, the younger man seemed to get his way, but Lyarra still wasn’t expecting the request when the men finally rejoined them.

“Lord Stark,” Medger Cerwyn said formally. “I request permission to join you at Winterfell until such a time as I have mastered this system of song.”

Well now.

"Granted. You will accompany the Masters Winterstone on their trip hence." Rickard agreed and they were off.

“I don’t get it,” Lyanna said on the trip back. “He was upset, but it still made him _want_ to come with us? How does that make sense?”

Brandon rolled his eyes but it was Benjen who replied. “It’s the fulfilment of a man’s romance! You can’t possibly understand, you’re a girl!”

Lyarra had to hold her daughter down lest she jump up and down the carriage in revenge.

“We really need to figure out how you keep plucking the thoughts right out of my head,” Brandon said.

“What?” Lyanna balked. “I knew it! You’re both jerks!”

And so it was that Medger Cerwyn ended up accompanying the Winterstones when they made their own trip to Winterfell in the sledhouse three days after their own return home. It wasn’t clear to Lyarra how well the North’s newest nobles appreciated the company and guidance he provided. What _was_ clear was a certain Maester’s feelings on finding out just _why_ they were entertaining such an august guest.

“You made a language for music!? _In_ _one night!?”_

Lyarra had laughed herself almost to tears at that reaction. The poor man seemed to take it as such a personal insult! She knew her son’s haphazard genius offended every last one of his sensibilities as a Maester and learned man, but she never got tired of seeing it. Sketches of windmill power, water wheels, machines that could supposedly drill seeds right into the earth and improve crop yields ten times over. With every new idea from her son’s mouth, the Maester’s reactions seemed to get more and more overwrought. It made for some truly boisterous dinners.

The Winterstones, by contrast, were extremely impressed by the alum. “Ain’t gonna deny none, that new kyln just makes me feel more of a fake, m’lord.” For such a large and strong man, Master Varr was too humble by half. “That wheel power you be talking of though…”

“Yes?” Brandon asked.

“Could someone be usin’ it to cut wood any?”

“If you made the saws round or put them on a chain, sure.”

“I’m really starting to wonder what all we’ve been doing these centuries,” Medger grumbled from here he was chewing on a pork rind. “None of this is even difficult! Now if someone came up with a summer stone of some sort to go with the winter one, then I’ll really be impressed.”

“Sand, gravel and baked lime.”

“Wait, what?”

Medger Cerwyn ended up living at Winterfell for near the whole year. He brought more than enough supplies and coin to cover his stay when they finally opened the road back up. He never got much further than he already was in the training yard, but learned everything Rickard spared time to teach him. He won himself the fondness of her children, especially Benjen who turned out to be a singer every bit as good as her eldest and twice as inspired, it seemed. “He literally picks the songs right out of my head!” Brandon would complain. Most of all, Medger paid very close attention to everything her firstborn ever said. Indulged every one of Brandon’s fancies no matter how outlandish on the surface. Lyarra Stark wondered what the young man felt some days. How deep his feelings ran, whatever they were, as he became more a student than mentor to a boy half his age. Wondered how much he suspected too, at the end of it.

It was a damned shame that she didn’t get to witness most of it. She got her moonblood just a over a sennight after they got back. It was a bad one, longer and more painful than any of the ones before, and the pain in her womb never fully left her afterwards. Then she took with a winter chill and was confined to her bed on and off for weeks at a time. That became her life for the next ten moonturns. And whenever the Maester asked her to try a new medicine that worked for everything _other_ than what ailed her, oh, those days were the most frustrating. Her moonblood came at increasingly irregular times thereafter too. At times it was enough to make her think she’d miscarried, no matter how many times Maester Walys assured her that wasn’t the case.

Her worry didn’t seem to compare to the one suffered by her children though. Maybe not so much Lyanna and Benjen who had Old Nan, Lady Della, Master Varr and Medger to distract them. But Ned was as perceptive as he was quiet, and Brandon seemed to take it worst of all. He swung wildly between condescending scorn at her sickness for having the gall to make her life difficult, and nerve-wracking worry bad enough to make him all but lock himself in a cellar for days on end glaring at moldy bread as if it was responsible for everything wrong in the world. That’s how Ned and Lyanna described it at least, when they came without him. All this over a chill and her womanly pains proving more stubborn than they should be. Honestly! It had certainly been amusing the first few times Brandon came to visit her sick room dressed like a bird, but really! She’d have thought her son would’ve learned better from his father by now!

Gods bless her husband because Rickard was the only one that seemed to keep his head.

“Be glad you’re not there for Walys and Bandon’s _discussions_ on your welfare,” Rickard would tell her in the evenings as he rubbed her back. “Last I saw them, they were arguing over whether or not our son was secretly out to poison you.”

Lyarra groaned into her pillow, and not just from the pain relief after having been abed for too long. Again. “You really don’t need to pamper me so much, husband,” Lyarra lied like the lying liar she didn’t need to grow old and bald and toothless to become, clearly. “I’m sure you – nnh! – have mo–oh!–re… important things to be dooo _oo_ ing.”

“Hardly. Everything is far enough along now to delegate. There is a matter out east that will need my attention soon, but I cannot be there in person for it regardless and it is not more important to me than this.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she moaned as her man brought out the rosemary oil and went from firm to soft strokes between one moan and the next. “At… at least one of you has his priorities in order. Honestly, those two! Ah… Some days I feel like banging their heads together until they see sense.”

“Don’t be too hard on them. I’ve a thought to indulge them myself on what few points they do agree on. Speaking of which, here.” Rickard wiped his hands on a rag, reached into a satchel and put a large empty jar on her bedside table. “We’re going to need you to fill that up.”

“With what!?”

Fortunately, Maester Walys finally came through with a concentrated extract of chamomile, peppermint, fennel and red raspberry leaf, so she finally started feeling better. The worst of the chill passed and her womb pains faded to dull twinges she could ignore after so long dealing with worse. Then her appetite returned and the Maester reluctantly agreed that she could start taking up her duties again – _slowly_.

She was very happy for it. It meant she wouldn’t have to miss her firstborn son’s first unaided horseback ride. The Maester had strongly advised against exiting the Great Keep, but her husband decided that walking out onto the veranda overlooking the main grounds was enough of a compromise. She wasn’t entirely pleased, but she was no fool to ignore good advice and the view stretched all the way to the stables anyway.

She found Lady Della already there, to her pleasant surprise. The young woman looked almost natural now in her finely cut dress, almost comely instead of plain, and she gave Lyarra a perfect curtsy as she walked to stand next to her at the railing. To her chagrin, Lyarra had ended up unable to see to her education. Fortunately, Old Nan did good work. Shortly after, Lyanna emerged from inside and hugged both her and the younger woman, if only briefly. She seemed to have missed quite a lot in her convalescence, Lyarra thought somberly. As soon as she felt completely back to her old self, she’d have to remedy that. That and a lot of things. She’d not even gotten introduced to Della’s twin sons.

Then her heart all but stopped when her son went and did the _opposite_ of everything his father and the stablemaster and Varr Winterstone and Medger Cerwyn had wasted their time trying to teach to him that whole morning.

Brandon Stark sunk his heels into the horse’s sides, bent forward and lashed sharply on the horse’s reins, sending the black stallion shooting forward as if launched from a catapult. “HYA!”

Master Winterstone gasped, Ned and Ben cried out from the side, the stable master vainly called a halt, Medger jumped out of the way with a cry of shock, Rickard Stark reached after him in horror, and all of their dismayed cries were drowned out by the fool boy’s mad laughter as he rode off on the large, black stallion just barely saddle-broken.

Lyarra Stark thought she’d die on the spot when the steed broke into full gallop and her son seemed about to fly clear off the horse’s back.

But none of that happened.

Instead, the mad boy leaned back and yanked sharply on the reins just short of the great keep itself. And so did the proud steed rear back majestically just below where the lady of the castle watched from on high, neighing in rhythm with is rider’s mad laughter.

Then Rickard caught up and Lyarra got to see for the first time what Rickard was like when he was too angry to even talk. The man stormed up to the horse, snarling like the wolf on every last one of the banners covering the walls, pulled Brandon off the saddle and then spun him around, holding him up in the air while laughing loudly, free and uproarious.

… That little monster! And her husband too, the boorish _arse!_ She was going to kill them both if it’s the last thing she did!

Alas, her righteous vengeance failed before it even began because she turned out to be the only Stark alive who even bothered assuring the Winterstones that no, being present wasn’t the same as being responsible and they should really rethink their assumptions about highborn and no, Medger dear, it’s _not_ your fault my mad son chose to be a reckless idiot as way to thank you for gifting him the precious steed you’ve raised and cared for and reared all these years for your own. Now are you sure you don’t want to keep it after all? You’re not likely to find another destrier birthed from a garron mare any time soon you know.

The young man assured her that he, indeed, remained as certain as the day he asked to join them at Winterfell – so _that’s_ why Robard seemed so aghast! – and could she perhaps prevail upon the Flints to teach him whatever ways they knew to cross horse breeds the way they did?

She said yes of course. _Someone_ in House Stark had to show good sense.

That day she went around calming spirits, spent most of her meals scolding her entirely too unapologetic firstborn, reassured her other children that she wasn’t going to forbid them from ever climbing on a horse just because their brother was going to end up in the crypts when she was done with him, and used the time left to bicker with her husband for egging him on the way he did. Then night fell and she was faced with the inescapable truth that one should thoroughly explore the full range of reconciliation opportunities resultant from a woman returning to her husband’s bed. It took hours before they were finished, and they still needed to spend some half of the next morning going over the methods that worked the best.

She remained cross with Brandon for some time yet, but at least she wasn’t alone in being out of patience with him. Rickard himself was just about done with everything he’d been put through that she _hadn’t_ had to deal with during her sickness, thank the Gods. So it was on the first day of the third sennight of the eleventh moon that he invited her to sit in on a game of cyvasse between him and the Maester.

Lady Lyarra Stark didn’t relish the thought, in all truth. She disliked the game. She disliked even more the way the Maester never failed to ruin even Rickard’s best strategies through some tactic or rule that he’d never before mentioned. It was like seeing her man set up to fail over and over again. She wondered sometimes if the Maester was even using real rules to eke out his wins anymore. She wondered if he hadn’t been lying about them all along. She didn’t understand why Rickard never gave voice to similar thoughts.

Then Rickard paused mid-way through the game to announce that Eddard would foster with Jon Arryn at the Eyre.

The world seemed to go on without Lyarra Stark thereafter. All the way to the end of the game which Maester Walys won through the latest of his underhanded plays.

Which was when Brandon, who’d watched the game while becoming more and more grim and quiet with every move and piece moved off the field, slipped off his chair, ambled behind his father’s desk, pulled Ice from its sheath and levelled it at Walys’ throat, no by your leave, no nothing.

“How long must you gaslight my father?”


	13. Confirmation Bias Is a Thankless Task (I)

“-. 262 - 273 AC .-“

He’d come prepared for many things when first sent North, but even so he was surprised. Not so much because his expectations weren’t met, but more _how_ they were met. Yes, the North proved just as bleak and cold and dreary as he’d expected. Yes, the people were stand-offish and suspicious and disdainful of southrons like him. He’d even anticipated being left adrift and unused during that first year, when he’d been called upon for little else besides sending letters and beginning the long and laborious task of replenishing the rookery from the ravens he brought with him. The old ones all had to be replaced after Lord Stark had ordered every last one of them slaughtered when the wasting sickness passed from man to bird. Much as it had been the right decision at the time, it did strain the maester’s sufferance at times, that he could admit. Near as much as the cold that bit and ground at him and seeped all the way into his bones on all but the brightest days of summer. He’d not even been allowed in the birthing chamber when the Lady of the North had her first child. The matter of begetting the heir to the whole North had instead been dumped in the hands of some midwife or other. It had been dangerous and unconscionable and an insult to which few others in his life could have compared. A maester’s best and only coin was his competence, how was he to make use of his when denied even the chance to try?

But a wise man knew when to act and when not to. Patience stood him in good stead when everyone around him proved how much less wise they were than he. And time was, as ever, a healing salve unto itself when it came to everything else. Thus he took charge of everything pertinent to happenings in the Maester’s Tower. Thus he began carving a larger and larger place in the Lord’s household. More so once Lord Rickard’s disposition began to thaw with every passing moonturn after his first child’s birth. By the time young Eddard began to grow in the Lady’s womb, there was no longer a question as to who should deliver him into the world, or any other Stark babes that may follow. Thus did Walys Flowers ascend to his position. Thus did a mere bastard become the healer and scholar and chief advisor of the Stark in Winterfell and wise man of the North.

From there, life was everything his fellows and teachers and his father told him it would be. The servants were obedient and discreet. The Lady was courteous. The men in the Lord’s council eventually grew appropriately deferential. The guards were competent and loyal but no more observant or clever than the South. And the Warden of the North himself, Rickard Stark, oh, he was a delight. Young and bitter and already so weary, but competent and driven and just self-aware enough to know how unprepared he was for his position that he literally craved whatever guidance he could grant.

Then the _demon_ came _._

It came when things were at their brightest. Stole a life that wasn’t its to take. Insinuated itself into the North’s highest family through pretense, guile and sympathy pulled out of grief and guilt for the soul it devoured. It all but annihilated the ability of the Warden of the North to think more than one step ahead, all in one great stroke.

“Seven curse me for a fool!” the maester lambasted himself as he paced back and forth at the top of his tower, waiting for the ring of bells that wouldn’t come. “All those Septons and maesters, all their writings and sermons and it never occurred to me that when they called the old gods _demons_ , it wasn’t all just empty zeal!”

“Zeal! Zeal! Zeal!” Cawed Alban from his perch.

To his shame, he was as taken in by the helpless lackwit act as much as everyone else at the start. He felt nowhere near the panic and despair and vain hopes of the Lady and Lord, but even his small share of it had been plenty. He’d played no part the little lord’s coming into the world, but he’d inquired after him and watched over him and cared for him in the years after. He’d even grown fond of the boy. He’d been looking forward to seeing and guiding the child’s growth. If the boy inherited just the tiniest lick of sense and grew up to be even half as biddable as his sire…

Instead, Walys Flowers was forced to counsel a father to murder his own child for the sake of his family and the North and the good of the realm. Never mind the mercy it would be for the boy himself.

“I thought the chill and dreariness of this gods-forsaken place would harden me. Instead I’ve damn up and gone soft!”

“Soft! Soft! Soft!”

Had he realized the truth in time, he’d have strangled the thing with his own hands and damn the consequences.

But he didn’t. Despite the thing being a horror straight out of Valyria or Asshai by the Shadow. By the time he did awaken to the terrible truth, it was too late. The demon’s moment of vulnerability had passed. Rickard Stark had broken at precisely the worst time. The creature gained enough control over its stolen body to play at a facsimile of life. Rodrik Cassel proved to be as loyal as he was gullible, oh, how quick damnation claimed the noblest knights! And the Lady Lyarra had done as women always did, thought with her heart instead of her mind and unwittingly become the monster’s greatest ally.

“So oft the people of the Faith decry northern barbarians as demon worshippers,” Walys lamented to his trusted raven, once again the only living thing he could rely on. “I never imagined how rooted it would be in actual fact!”

“Fact! Fact! Fact!”

He didn’t want to think how many hours and days he wasted stewing over his failure to do what needed doing. Stewed in his outrage and anger and bitterness and shame.

Oh how life could change! If there was any word that could never before have been used to describe his life, it was shame. There was no shame in his father when he put him into the belly of a Hightower girl while oath-bound to a life of celibacy. There was no shame in his lady mother when she washed her hands of him the moment he popped out of her. There was no shame in the whores of Oldtown either, when they cut him loose with not a copper to his name once he was old enough to want to avail of them himself. And as he grew every bit as quickly as the Seven-Pointed Star warned trueborn to beware, the bastard felt no shame of his own either. As he begged and swindled and thieved and bartered his way into becoming an acolyte of the Citadel, Walys Flowers resolved to rise higher than all others. Vowed that by the time he found out who’d spawned and abandoned him so heedlessly, he’d be so far above them that they would have little way to feel anything _other_ than shame. Then, when he forged his chain and underwent his last test that night in darkness, he emerged an all-new man seized with the absolute certainty that he would never feel shame again.

“To think I felt so proud,” Walys muttered as he tied the message around the leg of the white raven. “Such vindication! A whole night spent in total darkness with not a spark or glimmer in the glass candle. How proud I was to think all that time wasted on the higher mysteries proved something about the world rather than myself. What conceit it must have been.”

He sat gazing southwards for a long time that night, well after Alban disappeared into the distance with his damning burden.

And so began the grimmest and darkest chain of correspondence the North had likely ever seen. Or not seen, as would have to remain the case. For the sake of his neck. And that of everyone else. To think that his vows to Winterfell would be broken so swiftly! And he couldn’t even use it to teach the young lord a lesson. One of so very many he had yet to grasp. But it wasn’t the first time Walys Flowers broke an oath and it wouldn’t be the last. He’d begged and swindled and thieved and bartered his way into becoming an acolyte of the Citadel, his promise to himself the only thing pushing him forward. Walys Flowers had vowed to rise higher than all others. Swore that, by the time he found out who’d spawned and abandoned him so heedlessly, he’d be so far above them that they would have little to feel _other_ than shame under his gaze. Vowed that he’d then spit in their eye, turn his nose at them like the shit stains they were and walk away. But when he finished his chain, Archmaester Walgrave summoned him to his private chambers and proceeded to teach him life’s chief lesson: the grandest and mightiest of oaths weren’t worth the shit of the ones who made them.

_“What more should I have done for you, boy? I made you. What have you ever done for me, hmm? The world doesn’t owe you anything. Let this be your first lesson: you don’t make any investment unless you can see what you’ll get back. And how. Now, have you ever heard of cyvasse?”_

The young lord was lucky to learn this lesson from him instead of anyone else, let alone the thing that now used his heir’s bone and body for a second skin. One day Walys might even divulge all secrets, when everyone knew the proper place where they should stand. Then young Rickard would erupt and rage and impugn and have every last shred of righteous anger crushed. Ground out from his heart along with every dream and delusion. As it had been for him, so it would be for him.

The first response from the Citadel was sceptical. The next few increasingly less so with every code word and phrase and cypher used to convey his messages in that way that only scant few at the citadel were taught. He’d thought it a privilege when his father first showed them to him, quietly divulging to him the existence of that exalted circle of minds. He could see the burden in it now though. The amused dismissal conveyed by the archmaesters was turned entirely on its head within a year. First it gave way to alarm, then to unease, then to the sort of grim purpose that Walys had never even bothered hoping he’d somehow escape. If only they’d given him some advice he could actually act on!

“Seven forbid they come up with something actually useful,” Walys quietly murmured as he stroked Alban’s chest feathers, feeling every ounce of dread weighing him down. “How am I to relish knowing my judgment is considered equal to that of all the archmaesters? When all it tells me is to wait and see?”

“See! See! See!”

He lost count how many plans he devised to use one of his concoctions to bring a swift end to the nightmare. But with the Lady and her children and even its guard completely fooled by its mummery, there was no way. The fiend would likely decide to be doubly cruel and have one of those around it fall prey to the poison in its stead while Walys took the fall for its wickedness. The maester was certain the demon knew it too. Knew that he knew. He could tell from its refusal to accept anything he brewed. He knew it from its brazen intrusions into his quarters when he was away. He saw it in its eyes when it thought it wasn’t being observed. There was no way to fully hide that unworldly madness. If only the others could recognize it! Awaken to the infernal nature of the fell speech it growled and grunted when its control lapsed as it so often did. Walys had counted five different tongues that existed nowhere else in the known world, on top of the infernal mockery of common it used for its blandishments. And he did mean infernal. Had he a way to observe it uninterrupted, he had no doubt the count would climb to seven soon enough. Seven fell tongues to go with the seven hells that spat it out.

In his darkest moments, the maester seriously considered lunging at it with a knife to get it over with.

“Knights of the mind, they call us,” Walys said bitterly as the raven groomed his hair. “Cassel would cut me down like a scythe through wheat before I made a step.”

“Step! Step! Step!”

The last hope for the North, in a mockery that had to spring straight from the Crone, turned out to rest with the Lord Stark himself. Hopeless and bitter as he’d once more become, Rickard Stark’s weakness had nonetheless somehow led him to make precisely the right choices to remove himself from the demon’s immediate sphere of influence. Father forgive him, as distasteful as Walys found it to take advantage of a young man so broken and wretched, it was the only path left open. He had to bring the young man fully around to his way of thinking as swiftly as possible or everything would be lost. He consoled himself with knowing that reason and sanity would likely have demanded he step up to the plate regardless, sooner or later. Mother help him, someone had to think of the North and its children.

 _“Break a man’s morale and he won’t revolt even if he sits on a massive widlfire keg of frustration”_ Archmaester Walgrave had told him once, after Walys suffered one too many humiliating defeats in that Essosi game his father so loved to school his lessers through. _“But credibility counteracts demoralization, and that frustration can be released with immense energy if given a credible cause or leadership.”_

So the maester harnessed the carefully cultivated mien that all maesters were trained to affect. He’d once disdained the mummery, but he gained an all-new appreciation for it the more he relied on it. He took the initiative in his interactions with the young lord and resolved to never relinquish it. Not even in those rare moments when Rickard Stark seemed close to forgetting his grief and emerging from his despair, however briefly. He also made sure to always have criticism ready whenever the young lord showed self-assurance in his rule or as a father. And if he sometimes had to be harsh on the lad and underhanded in their cyvasse games, well, it wasn’t any worse than how his own father taught _him_ life’s real lessons once he finished his chain. For Rickard Stark to revert to his previous, brittle self could not be borne. Not for his sake or anyone else’s. Who knew which way he’d shatter when he broke again? The demon grew more cunning and skilled in his mummery with every passing day.

The deadlock stretched agonisingly, for sennights, moons and then whole years of fighting the demon’s sway with his own, growing influence. On the young lord, his court, his household, and his wife. Even his children, once little Lyanna came along and young Eddard’s education under him finally began. The growing self-reliance of the demon itself was becoming something of a boon as well, much as Walys hated to admit it. He only needed to bide his time a while longer. Just wait for the lady to loosen the unwitting leash she had on the monster and perhaps some of the options previously discarded could be reassessed.

Then came Benjen Stark’s birthing day and the deadlock was broken in the most catastrophic manner. The demon cast off all pretense when everyone was distracted. Vanished for hours. Went and did the one thing Rickard Stark had unwittingly shown wisdom in, when he forbid it from communing with the rest of its fell kin. Its body’s mother was distraught, its guard was forfeit and Rickard Stark was seized by such cold fury that even Walys could find no purchase on his mood or on his time. The demon’s helpless act was refreshed against all reason. Its guard was killed without even the barest chance for Walys to uncover whatever he’d heard or seen that he _must_ have for the thing to orchestrate his removal despite Cassel’s continued loyalty. As for whatever the demon did in the _Gods_ wood – feh! – it eliminated whatever last hurdle was stopping it from perfecting its mummery. Thus did the demon cast Winterfell into chaos unequalled since its first arrival.

The thing even had the _gall_ to then go and snare Cassel’s brother as well. As if to warn him that he could and would do everything again unless he stayed out of its way! Then it started to pretend like _Walys_ was the suspicious one!

“Thus does the good liar lose to the better liar,” Walys snarled as he paced within his tower like a caged animal. “Seven take the fiend and its infernal skill in bestirring strong feelings even in men with literal ice in their veins instead of blood!”

“Blood! Blood! Blood!”

Feeling outraged, humiliated and seized by utter dread that never went away after, Maester Walys bitterly conceded defeat and turned to his one, final resort short of poison: persuading lord Rickard to have it fostered.

That was how the Seven finally sent him the sign he hadn’t realized he so desperately needed. The young lord turned out to already be thinking about it. In fact, he’d been thinking along similar veins for quite some time. If not for his poor and helpless firstborn – may it burn in the deepest fires of the Seven Hells for the rest of time! – lord Rickard had already been considering matches for his other children. Oh, the lost opportunities! Even in _this_ the demon had run circles around him, having him convinced for years upon years that it would be folly to even broach the topic of southron fosterage and marriage alliances.

Thank the Seven it worked, hallowed be their name. Five whole years it cost him, but it worked. All that was left was to confer with his masters at the citadel on whether or not to risk pushing for a southern option. As much as he wanted to get rid of the monster, having the heir to the North – ha! – fall to treachery down south could be a major setback in the mission that Walys was given when dispatched to Winterfell in the first place.

 _“The flames of chaos sown during the Conquest and the Dance are only now guttering out,”_ the Archmaesters had told him when giving his assignment, what felt like a lifetime ago _._ _“The Citadel’s finest minds have long toiled to put the realm in order. We’ve snuffed out what embers we could, fanned what fires needed burned out fastest, and have done our best to set the groundwork for a better world. You will help us from here on. Perhaps with a bit less madness this time. We already have four of the Seven Kingdoms and the Iron Throne. You will go to Winterfell. Go and get us the North.”_

When Alban finally came back from their distant home, he carried with him an answer which, though not the one he wanted, was nonetheless the one he’d expected the most. The one he’d most prepared for. So he thought and watched and waited for the right moment to nudge the young lord towards the mindset he wanted before making his case. It was harder than he expected not to be too blatant about his southron aims. The North had so many valid grievances. But he had a duty and he would carry it through.

Then he braced himself as well as he could for the demon’s inevitable retaliation.

Only… it never came. Just like the enmity and escalation he’d been on guard against for that entire time never materialised either.

Instead, the demon just… made nice. Played the perfect storybook prince to his mother, the wise elder brother to the surviving Stark children, and the dutiful son to its body’s father in whatever rare moments they happened to share breathing space. That wasn’t the be-all of its changes in behaviour, but the creature seemed completely disinterested with Walys now, its only real opposition. Instead, it took to wandering the keep grounds and Wintertown, meeting new people, watching tradesmen and buying the occasional trinket. To Walys’ renewed shame, even he was almost taken in all over again. Could it be he was wrong? Or perhaps… perhaps little Brandon had never been fully gone? Maybe he’d somehow prevailed against the creature and come back? Had the Seven answered his prayers after all? It was enough to drive a mad man sane, fool the most watchful eye and dispel even the deepest suspicions by dint of sheer persistence. Or it would have been, if not for two things. For one, the thing came up with a torturously labyrinthine game just to indulge its craving to play god. And for the other, it disguised its fell knowledge as a windfall to the great unwashed masses, just so the young lord would change his mind about sending him away and thus destroy Walys’ last hope.

“It knows!” Walys hissed to his only confidant as he paced alone in his tower the day of the fair. “What else does it know? What else has it done that was specifically aimed at me, even as I didn’t see it? Some days it feels like there are none here he ever sets to vex except myself!” The maester suddenly froze in dawning horror. “Could the thing have been aimed against me from the start?”

Could the only aim of the thing and its kin have always been to thwart the Citadel’s noble purpose? Here, in their last stronghold they had in man’s world?

 _“Ware the arts and blandishments of so-called warlocks and witches, for they are a crafty and deceitful lot,”_ his Archmaester father had told him once. _“Stomp them out when you can, discredit them when you can’t, and teach the truth at every turn. It will be a toilsome task. Even our noble patrons have been taken in by such lies and their empty promises, but you must persevere! The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles.”_

 _“But magic was real once,”_ Walys had protested, despite himself. _“You need only look at the dragons and everything else the Targaryens brought with them from Dragonstone and Valyria before then.”_

 _“And who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around?”_ Walgrave had scoffed. _“Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords? Ah, but I have said too much.”_

Walys had dismissed it as just another one of his father’s ways to test him on how well (or all too often badly) he could spot a lie. Now, though, his mind went back to that exchange and he felt shame all over again. Shame and fury. “Could it be that the only reason it emerged was _because_ of me? It must be! It’s the only answer left!”

“Left! Left! Left!”

“By the Seven, it makes perfect sense!” Walys moaned as he redoubled his pacing. “The thing never ceased its machination, it just changed tactics! Rather than throwing chaos at me to set back our aims, it’s accelerating them! Could it be I’ve underestimated the creature? Because it is starting to feel like it has only been set to spite me and me alone!”

“Lone! Lone! Lone!”

Had his coming doomed little Brandon to oblivion?

The more he thought about it, the clearer the thing’s plans became. Every one of its _inventions_ were such that chaos would inevitably follow in their footsteps. Paper would devour woods wholesale and devastate every farmer or tradesman that relied on parchment or vellum as a source for coin. Four-field farming would cause unrest by enriching already wealthy landowners and leave behind the small, even if it didn’t _lengthen_ the harvest season. To say nothing of what would happen if it caught in the Reach. Double-entry bookkeeping would buy the demon people’s favour not once but every time they saved on coin thanks to its use. Carvings and toys were a sure way to charm the next generation – he was already doing it with the Stark children! And the plants and _mushrooms_ , by the Warrior, the creature wasn’t even trying to be subtle with those. The only thing missing was the redcap that ancient Ironborn used for their battle madness and the thing would be ready to revert even warfare to the savagery of those dark ages. As if war wasn’t already savage enough! But he supposed the blood to feed the trees had to come from somewhere, Walys thought bitterly.

He’d missed it when considered individually, but all of that together? They were practically designed to bring the realm to the verge of schism years before even the rashest time the Citadel ever dreamed up! Always something new. Always something grand. Always something to drive one just that little bit closer to the brink of madness. What next, will it entice men to defy the Seven outright and aim to claim the skies themselves?

When Maester Walys saw the floating fires converge upon Winterfell, he thought he was at the end of his rope. The night passed in a haze of nightmares where the world died in a rain of fire.

Then he woke up to learn that Rickard Stark had fallen completely under the demon’s sway within the span of a single night.

Walys Flowers had never felt so alone. He hated the feeling. He cursed the thing that had done this to him. He grieved the man that in another life he might have called a friend.

He didn’t know how he kept his mien after that, especially once the thing became a fixture of the lord’s routine and Winterfell’s daily life. To say nothing of the lord and the demon’s frequent time spent in private and secrecy. By the time he watched Rickard Stark ride out in the middle of Winter while committing _treason_ – a crown! A crown bare on his brow! – Walys Flowers though he might go mad.

“Maybe I’ve already gone mad,” the man said darkly as he finished the final brewing step of his concoction the day after the Starks’ trip to the Cerwyns. “But if there is any time to go mad, it is now.”

The glass candle hadn’t lit for him, but that didn’t change that his study of the higher mysteries had been extensive. Even if magic had passed him over, alchemy could serve to lay it bare before him, and securing permission to forage the Godswood for ingredients was among the first things he did when he came North in the first place. The visions were a confusing jumble of colours, dead crows, one-eyed ravens and him standing before the heart tree feeling calm and safe as if whatever had been gazing out from it had disappeared. It was a hope long sought but one he didn’t trust in the slightest. A feeling justified when he awoke from delirium into that half-state where he still had one foot in the other side. The vision that met his sight when he looked south at the returning sledhouse vindicated every suspicious and ill thought he’d ever held.

The bloodline of the Kings of _Winter_ indeed. There was nothing of winter in that abomination of pitch blackness studded with a thousand and one fiery eyes.

Somehow, the thing didn’t notice him pierce its disguise. Or perhaps it did but didn’t realize anything different about him. Or pretended as much. Or didn’t. It mattered little in the end. His path was set on the only option left: setting everything aside to move against the thing directly.

“I’ve been trying to do too much at once, haven’t I? It stopped me from doing what I should have done from the very start. Or perhaps I simply hadn’t the heart for it,” Walys murmured in the dark that night as his weary soul filled with terrible purpose. “No more. If working around it won’t do anything, the only thing left is to move against it outright.”

Alban, for once, had nothing to say.

When their reply came, the Archmaesters didn’t have much to say either, save to remind him of the proper order of things. Namely that it was folly to engage an enemy without first sabotaging its support structure. Walys Flowers had never felt so stricken or hopeless. But he had the knowledge, he had a duty, and the Citadel had a vision in which he trusted with his whole heart. And in the end he’d always expected that it would come to this, deep down.

He still wanted to knife the thing whenever he laid eyes on it, if only so it wouldn’t claim another innocent. Unfortunately, opportunities remained as rare as water in the desert. He also couldn’t go a day without finding a new reason against the direct option. Like on finding out just why Medger Cerwyn came to Winterfell for an extended stay. The obstacle was the maester’s own temper.

“You made a language for music? _In one night!?”_

That the demon was the only one besides lord Rickard who _didn’t_ laugh at him was somehow more infuriating than everything it had done and not done up to then.

The winter chill that beset Lady Lyarra was the darkest of all the Seven’s sign’s he’d lived to see.

“What a world this is, where murderers are wont to mourn their victim as much as their blood!” The maester lamented as he mixed the remedy for the chill that now masked the true illness sapping Lady Stark’s life. “Will the Seven curse me for my part in changing it? Or is this their way to show approval?”

Shockingly, the demon was the one who took Lyarra’s sudden sickness the worst. If he didn’t know better, Walys could have sworn it was genuinely distraught. It certainly acted mad enough for it, even if the maester didn’t believe for one second its grief was real. Not beyond losing its greatest enabler at any rate. Even so he might have bought it. But then the thing went and ‘invented’ a mechanical loom through another one of his damnable contests, ostensibly so the woman wouldn’t suffer boredom! Another trade added to the list of those that would be trampled over before winter’s end!

It was a mixed blessing that lord Rickard kept it so occupied, if only for the opportunities to gain further insight into the thing’s reach without having to converse with it directly.

“What a sight,” he mused as he watched Rickard Stark put it through weapon drills. Spears this time. “Until just moons ago you wouldn’t have thought the Lord was so fond of Lord Brandon.”

“Feh!” Medger Cerwyn scoffed in amusement. “Lord Stark is _fond_ of roasted chicken. He is _fond_ of Ice. He is _fond_ of his bannermen. None of that even begins to compare with what he feels for the Young Lord.”

Maester Walys wondered how the young man’s eyes could already be failing him. Or if his own did. Even he could rarely tell what Rickard Stark was thinking, let alone feeling. The man’s expression barely ever changed, even during the fair. Or the morning after his fall under the sway of the hellish creature. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time heir Cerwyn was failed by his own eyes. Or his own sense at that. The lad was all broken up over having handed out his proud steed to the demon. But he’d never even thought to ask Walys for his expertise in breeding a replacement, as he said he wanted to do. Repeatedly. Animal husbandry had been a field of study at the citadel for thousands of years. There was no one better than a maester to know how to mix, match and cultivate the best traits! But instead, the man was making noises about begging for help from the savages in the mountains. The odds of that doing anything good were about as high as the clans becoming literate before the sky fell down.

That’s when he learned the demon had taken to teaching letters and numbers to the youth of Wintertown. Half of whom were the children of those very clans. Somehow, the idea that the Mountain Clans might become the most literate people in the North didn’t spark any amusement anymore. Far be it from Walys to advise a demon not to waste its time but how did it even _know_ he was thinking about that? Was it reading his mind somehow? Seven save him!

“I don’t understand why you bother,” Walys told the thing during its body’s name day feast, which even the maester couldn’t afford to miss. Lady Lyarra was the only one not in attendance, on account of her illness. “They’ll not find any use in it.”

The thing shrugged. The motion looked perversely natural. “Teach letters and numbers to people and maybe anatomy and medicine, then let them research history themselves and there you go! Free will. Maybe even wisdom.”

“You might be overestimating them a tad.”

“Am I? Man’s quest to master nature began when a bunch of barbarians stuck their hands into fire and found out that it was bad and shouldn't be done ever again. Then they found that staying a safe distance away from the same fire keeps you warm without burning you, which is good. That tried and true method has continued and evolved in complexity to this very day. All hail science.”

Maester Walys was acutely aware of the sheer hypocrisy that had just been uttered. He was even more aware of the knife in his sleeve pocket and the table between him and the monster. “Sometimes I wish I knew what goes on in that head of yours, lad.”

“No you don’t,” the creature said as Walys’ heart stuttered. “People who say that are the same ones who’ll start complaining about boredom after the first hundred words. At least that’s my experience. Look what Rodrik did after prolonged exposure.” Walys couldn’t… had the mask just slipped? The man’s brother was easily within hearing range. “I’m sorry, Martyn I shouldn’t make light of it.”

“It’s alright, my lord,” the knight said as if he was at peace with its disrespect. “I’ll take it out on you in your next flying run.”

“Fair.”

Gods, how many noble knights would he have to watch be damned one after another?

Sometimes, during those times when he couldn’t avoid its presence – like their lessons, Father grant him patience – he tried tripping it up with pointed questions. Like that new metal that wasn’t a metal. Alum. The demon admitted it was actually ash but claimed in the same breath that it was also salt, somehow.

“I wouldn't be surprised if the law of narrative inconvenience uses cryolite to manifest through,” the thing said as if that was supposed to make any sense. “Knowing how much of a cunt fate tends to be in this world, odds are the rock is only a natural resource in fuck-you places like Leng or the Thousand Islands. Maybe underwater so it's completely invisible and breaks the keel of every ship that sails by. Failing that, beyond the Wall.”

Maester Walys stopped everything he was doing at the sheer audacity he was hearing.

“Oh well,” the creature said, looking back down at the High Valyrian test it was taking. Incidentally baring the back of its neck. The desk between them and Martyn Cassel’s presence in the corner had never been a heavier burden. “I guess it’s just as well. Even if I _do_ manage to harness lightning, good luck getting the fire hot enough to melt that stuff down.”

Walys, who was apparently going mad after all, went and asked why it can’t just use fire magic or electromancy for whatever it was. He immediately cursed himself for slipping and-

“Do you know any?” the thing wearing Brandon Stark’s face asked, seemingly guilelessly.

“… Sadly no.” Or he might have already used it for its _real_ purpose by now. “Magic is gone from this world.” Oh how the Seven loved their irony!

“Hmm…”

There was just one last thing that didn’t mesh with anything else. The recognition of the demon’s ‘contributions’ to the North and its people. Or rather, the shortage thereof. Barring the New Year’s Fair, Rickard Stark always made sure to blur the demon’s role in the crops and trinkets and inventions and new industries that would turn the realm upside down come spring. But the demon just took it without protest. Even seemed to appreciate it. Or pretended to.

Walys asked about it during cyvasse, the only part of their old routine that remained. The one pillar that stood him in good stead with the young man, even now.

“My son asked me to. He worries about rumors harming our image down south. Far too often down there, bright children who are too smart are feared and thought witches of some kind, granted magical and unholy knowledge by some demons from the Seven Hells.” Walys barely managed not to react. “I’ll make sure our bannermen know the truth of the matter, but otherwise I’m willing to indulge him this.”

That and far too much besides, Walys thought bleakly but didn’t say.

“Where does young Brandon come up with his ideas?” Walys instead asked lady Lyarra one evening while he was treating her winter symptoms. Only those, Seven forgive him.

“My son is touched by the gods,” the woman told him.

He was touched by something alright. Walys didn’t even want to think about the return message the Archmaesters had sent about the printing press. The latest in the demon’s ‘contests’ that eroded professional standards and confidences. An obvious move to erode what little foundation existed for the guilds to make it past White Harbor and finally bring the North in line with the rest of the realm on taxes and trade. Yet another means of stability that was being smothered in its cradle.

“Or so I like to think,” Lady Lyarra said. Neither of her sicknesses should have made her drift off mid-speech, but it was a known effect of the mixes he was using. Not much longer now. “He claims otherwise, but he can never give me a straight answer as to why, and it wouldn’t be the first thing he’s wrong about.”

She could tell that much but couldn’t see through even its flimsy mask of early on?

“Think of the future. Think of the North and its children,” Walys would tell himself in his quarters some evenings, when his silent raven was his only company. “Think of the children. The human ones, not the ones that spring from trees to play with the bodies of small boys.”

It was torture to work so slowly, but it was either that or risk being found out and throwing the Starks and the North even further into the arms of the creature manipulating all of them. And losing his neck of course. Walys tried not to let the thing’s existence provoke him any further. Unfortunately, it proved easier said than done. Increasingly so the more the lady weakened despite the worst of her symptoms fading thanks to his recipes. The thing was determined to persist in its fretful mummery. The creature even went as far as to start work on a ‘cure’ made out of mold.

Mold!

In a fit of madness, Walys actually demanded to be brought in whatever project the thing was working on. To his shock, the creature agreed even without the lord having to command it. To his even greater shock, what he found was enough to upturn everything he’d set out to do since the fair. It was enough to make him argue with the creature with lord Rickard right there to witness.

Somehow, he lost neither his head to a sword nor his respect in the lord’s eyes. He didn’t give himself away either. If anything, it was the opposite. But that only made his unexpected realization all the more frantic.

“It doesn’t want to save her, it wants to _kill_ _her!_ ” He hissed to Alban that same night. He was a fool, never even considering that the thing might reach a point where the lady’s leash was more a hindrance than a help. The containers, the process, the distillery, the need for a myriad steps. “Over half of the poisons I know are made that way!” Could it be he’d overestimated the creature? Was it a simple demon for a simple people? Because he couldn’t fathom why it’d let him inspect what it was doing unless it was sure he wouldn’t understand it. “The thing even went and _explained everything_ , Seven Hells!”

It was folly to cease the plan without input from his southern masters, but the irony that both he and a demon from the seven hells were out to murder an innocent woman for the exact same aim was not lost on him. He immediately stopped what he was doing to her and set about undoing the damage before it was too late. Then he gathered up whatever substances he had left and distilled a concentrated remedy for the _real_ troubles ailing her. Chamomile to deaden pain and fight the chill and infection, peppermint for the spasms, fennel to relieve her womb cramps and red raspberry leaf to correct her moon cycle. Each could make for a potent tea unto themselves, but he went further. Extracted and mixed the most concentrated essence of each, then mixed them together in the proportions that would best suit her specifically. Days of collecting and pressing and distilling essences. That the process was _also_ similar to what he’d just seen the demon working on was another irony not lost on him.

Smith be praised, it worked. The lady’s true symptoms lifted. It wasn’t an actual cure for her condition, but there was no such thing for consumption regardless, not even in the Citadel’s whole knowledge trove. Even the books and scrolls it never doled out, for obvious reasons. Hearty food and drink were the only things that could bolster the woman, now that she’d be regaining the proper appetite for them. Food, drink, exercise and the mercy of the Gods might just see the Lady Stark still live.

For now.

Perhaps.

The day Lady Lyarra started walking about again, it was all he could do to put the proper act under the praise coming at him from all corners. Much harder was to keep up the guise upon lord Rickard’s painfully earnest overture of friendship in the wake of it. The man invited him to sit on one of the demon’s games. Which the lord himself chaired while all ‘four’ of his children played the heroes for the first time together. First Men fighting the early stages of the Andal Invasion, with the demon playing the part of Tristifer Mudd while lord Rickard controlled Armistead Vance.

Maester Walys awoke in his bedchambers the next day, head pounding from a hangover and memories muddled by the Blank Mind he fed himself after retreating to his tower the evening prior, rattled and drunk enough to inflict upon himself even that. He vaguely remembered the laughter of Winterfell’s guards and councillors for having taken so long to finally turn into a proper Northman. It made him vomit everything he hadn’t already upended the previous night.

He never thought he’d drink his own poison, but the reason why was still clear in his mind, even if the memory had been mercifully purged from his recollections. The little Starks playing hero through toys and numbers. Myriad attempts by them to play and act as a way to avoid the roll of the dice they seemed to shun. Lord Rickard staying faithful to history wherever they failed to make a stand. And worst of all, the speech that the demon held just before the last battle. Walys couldn’t remember it anymore, thank Gods. He’d drank the Blank Mind to make himself forget those blandishments above all others. He couldn’t afford any cracks in his resolve, not now. But the thing’s words, they’d almost gotten him. Even with all his knowledge and insight and suspicions, they’d still almost gotten him. Whatever they’d been. The words. The speech. The dumbfounded silence at the end of it, when everyone stared at the thing as if they’d finally seen through its fell seeming. Even as Walys was on the verge of losing faith in all of his beliefs about its purpose, despite that his conviction as to its nature remained the same. Then little Eddard asked if his ‘brother’ could write all of that down and the thing mildly said ‘I want to roll persuasion,’ at which point the man cast from ice known as Rickard Stark burst out into uproarious laughter and embraced the demon along with his three children, tears flowing down his cheeks like a man who’d suddenly had a life-long crisis of faith completely healed.

Turning Rickard Stark to the Seven had been an idle side project compared to everything else. Just another step in finally aligning the North with the good of the realm.

 _“The difference between brilliance and insanity is success_ ,” his father once told him.

Now, even his last and smallest accomplishment had been taken away. All those years of guidance he gave the man, ruined.

Walys spent the morning all through afternoon kneeling in his chambers praying to the Seven with all the fervor he spent all his youth failing to muster. Then he prayed even more, up until the time he’d set aside to play his regular game of cyvasse with Rickard Stark in the lord’s solar.

He frowned at Lady Lyarra’s presence when he walked in. He glowered at the sight of the demon when he saw it was also there. Young Rickard was amused, thinking Walys was still suffering from a hangover. Somehow, the maester still played his role like he usually did afterwards. But for the first time even here, he found no stability or solace in their ritual.

Then the demon took all leave of its senses and held him at sword point.

“How long must you gaslight my father?”

This was it, Walys thought emptily as his gaze travelled along the sword’s blue blade to the dark glare of the fiend holding it to his neck. This was the moment it all came to a head and how long must he _what_? Gas? Light? What was it talking about?

“Son,” Rickard Stark said lowly. “What are you doing?”

“Father,” said the creature. “Indulge me in a thought exercise. Picture the young Warden of the North, newly ascended amidst a sea of corpses. Bereft. Isolated. To say nothing of how your fight against the consumption sickness back then messed up your head. Then comes the wise maester, learned on your likes and dislikes thanks to the missives of his predecessor. Knowing just how to connect with you. Suddenly you have a friend. A mentor even! And that mentor has a host of other friends just as learned and wise as him! He teaches you. Heals you. Tends tend to us when we are sick and injured, or distraught over the illness of a parent or a child. Whenever we’re weakest and most vulnerable, there he is. Sometimes he heals us, and we are duly grateful. When he fails, he consoles us in our grief, and we are grateful for that too. Out of gratitude we give him a place beneath our roof and make them privy to all our shames and secrets, a part of every council. And before too long, the ruler has become the ruled.”

… The thing had the gall to throw stones first even now. It hadn’t even mentioned the lady’s poisoning but the emptiness in Walys’ heart suddenly churned hot and boiling and he was going to-

Rickard Stark rose to his feet, walked around the desk, stopped behind the thing wearing his son’s skin and grabbed Ice by the hilt. “Son. You will not break guest right in my halls.” The thing twitched in place. Walys swore he felt the edge of the Valyrian steel touching his neck. “The penalty for that is death. Do _not_ ask me to behead you. You know I’d never be able to go through with it. Then the King of Winter will be forsworn and made an oathbreaker not fit for rule or crown, and where would we be?”

That… Walys had no idea what to say to that.

Seemingly, neither did the demon. It surrendered the sword hilt and obediently went back to his seat under the nudge of its body’s parent and the aghast gaze of the lady mother watching from nearby.

Then Rickard stark pointedly _didn’t_ remove the blade from Walys’ neck. Instead, he sat on the edge of his desk facing the creature.

“I do believe…” The man never turned his eyes away from the thing before him, but Ice moved to rest flat on top of the back of Walys’ chair, next to his jugular. “That I’m being underestimated.”


	14. Confirmation Bias Is a Thankless Task (II)

## “-. 273 AC .-“

Walys Flowers was blessed with a prodigious imagination. Not the glut that saw people slipping into delusions and hedge fancies. But not the dearth of it either, that saw even the most learned of maesters become little more than droning regurgitators of words when called upon to put their learning to good use. That didn’t mean he could predict every possible turn of events, as indeed no one ever could. It did, however, mean that he could well imagine all the paths that events could take if he knew the starting scenario and the actors involved.

Few things had been on the maester’s mind the last few years besides what would now surely unfold. The shape of things upon succeeding in his purpose. Or, as had instead become the case, being found out.

He rather knew what would now come.

Then the demon walked to the largest window, unlatched the blinds, opened both panes wide and took three steps back, bracing itself as if something was going to bowl him ov-

Alban swooped into the room through the window and landed on the monster’s shoulder.

Walys Flowers felt all the blood drain from his face.

“You used to care for me when I was small, maester,” The monster turned in his direction, some ghastly hellsmoke flowing over both its eyes as it stared at him. “Inquired after me. Worried over me when the mindstorm took me. Even later after we butted heads more and more often and you never made a secret of your disapproval of me… even that seemed just so _genuine_. For a while I even thought my suspicion of you was totally unfounded. What did I have to go on after all? Pure conjecture from vage dreams and you being a southron Andal.” Maester Walys barely registered what he was hearing, gaping in horror at the sight of his one, closest companion being suborned and taken from him like everything else had been. “And then you go and prove that even baseless suspicion can be right by trying _murder my mother_ you self-absorbed, oathbreaking, bastard _shitfuck_ -!”

“Son-”

“No, dad! I don’t know how you can still sit there and take it but I can’t stand for this anymore.”

“Oh spare me your blandishments, you f-AH!” the sword abruptly kissed the skin of his neck.

“Do not speak out of turn,” Rickard Stark commanded with all the weight of an iceberg. “Brandon is above you. Do not interrupt him. Ever. Do not comment. In fact, until I say otherwise, do not speak at all.”

Maester Walys choked back his words and promptly forgot what he’d been about to say.

“And you, son, will not interrupt _me_.”

“… I know, father, I’m sorry but even now he can’t help it! He does it to everyone, he even did it to me.” The thing had the gall to glare at Walys as it spoke over its supposed father, finally shedding the guise of the dutiful child. “You even did it to me, you bastard. I watched you rant and rave about me to your pet for months and I felt _sorry_ for you, even guilty sometimes! Even when mom got sick I could never tell if you were really poisoning her or trying to help until I sat and watched you literally code that secret correspondence. You never healed her, did you? You treated her symptoms while the real problem got worse. Even then you only treated her chill so it would seem like she was improving even though that wasn’t the problem. Even after I _knew_ it, it still took me seeing your secret stash to finally do something! It was blind luck you decided to drink yourself stupid enough to go and ransack your own poison stash while I was looking on! And you didn’t even use any of them on mom. You just gave her stuff that only worked without awful side effects when they _weren’t_ in combination. Not that I knew it at first,” it admitted bitterly.

 _If everyone knew what they needed when they needed it, you'd not have survived past that night_ , Walys thought with ample bitterness of his own.

“I _knew_ chill treatments don’t addle the wits. I _knew_ consumption doesn’t do it either. And I still sat on it like a fool! Congratulations, maester! If not for magic, you’d have had your way and I’d never been able to do a thing! If not for that last message the raven was there for, if I hadn’t watched you apply that cypher, I still wouldn’t know if there was a group of you or if you were bought by someone or just acting alone. Was there any point where you were actually trying to help? How long until you’d have resorted to those dusts and vials under the raven nesting boxes? Or would you have just kept up what you were already doing? Why the hell did you even change your mind? What the hell possessed you to think I want to kill my own mother!? Even if you think I’m a demon, it would’ve been inconsistent with _everything I’ve done my whole life_ , I even _told_ you I’m trying to find a poison for diseases, not people-!”

“Brandon!” Valyrian steel literally drew blood as Walys flinched when Lady Lyarra spoke and rose behind him. “Brandon stop!”

“But… I…he…“ the demon stumbled over its own words as its body’s mother strode for and took its face in her hands. The white raven squawked in startlement and flew away to watch quietly from the top of the display cabinet. Both demon and mother ignored him.

“Brandon, stop. Stop. I’m fine. I’m here, I’m walking and I’m getting stronger by the day.”

“But that’s still a tenth of what you could do before, and you got sick exactly ten years after the wasting decimated Winterfell,” the demon said despairingly. “Your moonblood comes and goes, right? Your womb still pains you, doesn’t it? You still piss blood don’t you? Don’t you?” The woman didn’t seem to have an answer. “…When father takes you to bed, do you bleed afterwards?”

The question only gave way to a deep silence damning enough for even the darkest confessions, but the monster wasn’t satisfied if he didn’t infringe on even that. “The worst part is that it doesn’t even matter now. He can’t heal you anyway. Nobody knows how to heal consumption, not even the Citadel.” The thing looked away from the lady and glared at him again, before just averting its eyes from everyone. It had the gall to look grief-stricken. “And neither can I.”

“Brandon-“

“I know exactly what to make and how to make it!” The gall of the thing to pretend Rickard Stark’s order not to interrupt didn’t include the lady. “I could spit out seven, a dozen, two dozen different steps from memory right now, but it’s worth jack shit! I don’t know what the catalysts are called, or even if they're all known. I know what they should do, but I don’t know what _else_ they can do, or even what they all look like. I couldn’t properly describe them to someone who actually knows natural sciences even if I tried. I can name half again as many of nature’s building blocks than the citadel knows about, but I don’t know even half the reactions for them, let alone for naturally-occurring compounds! And I can’t even make a contest or it, because we don’t have alchemists and our own court healer’s been actively _murdering_ you for the past few months!”

Maester Walys stared blankly at the fretful creature falling to pieces before him. Having had no choice but to look at it due to the sword at his throat, he found himself noticing things he’d not noticed before. The paleness of its skin. The bags under its eyes. The redness creeping up into the white from beneath its lids like gnarly roots. As it spoke, its eyes even grew watery, almost. The thing before him was a despairing, fretful, exhausted mess of a young boy. It really looked and acted like just a boy… Strange and knowledgeable and too precocious by half but… Could it be that…?

“Dad, I’m calling in that one request,” the thing brazenly said, as if it had any sort of rightful claim on anything at all. “Whatever else happens, whatever else you decide to do, don’t send us south. Don’t foster us, don’t betroth us, don’t marry us off. Any of us. Keep us here. Keep us above the Neck.”

… but no. Even here and now its words were poison. The memory of one and a thousand eyes dotting some unthinkable abomination flashed through his mind just as clearly as always. The maester’s face twisted under the realization that it once again got to him. To think a demon would be able to fake even mournful grief and exhaustion. What manifold and disgusting mummery! Did it never grow tired of lying?

What was he thinking, it was a demon from the Seven Hells, it literally thrived on lying and-

“Denied.”

The word crashed the fell mood to pieces with all the grace of House Gardener’s last gasps upon the Field of Fire.

“Wife,” Lord Rickard spoke in the grim silence that followed, breaking Walys’ train of thought completely. “Why don’t you go prepare our son’s bedchambers and have some warm milk and honey summoned up? It seems our son needs an early night. I’ll send him to you shortly.”

“What? But…” Whatever protests the thing wanted to spout died on its lips.

“… That may well be a good idea,” Lyarra Stark agreed, stepping away from the boy-thing and pointedly not looking in Walys’ direction. “… I’ll have some myself, I think.”

“Honey works on infections,” the demon said thickly, turning away to wipe at its eyes. “But not this one.”

“Well I’ll enjoy it regardless,” Lyarra Stark said with barely a waver in her voice as she wiped her son’s tears away before leaving. “I’m not dead yet.”

The door opened and closed, leaving behind two men who hadn’t moved, one by choice and one by lack of it, and the demon of a boy that turned to glare at Walys with moist eyes and opened its mouth to-

“Son.”

The childlike beast bit back whatever it was going to say with a snarl. It then looked between the maester and behind him to the door the Lady had just left through, before averting its eyes from them both and turning to Rickard Stark, who gazed sternly down at his supposed progeny while Ice still bit into-

“What does gaslighting mean?”

… or things could go ahead and unfold in a way completely unforeseen, Walys thought blankly.

“What does gaslighting _mean_ , son?” Rickard Stark repeated himself even though it was one of the things he most disdained.

“… It’s when someone secretly makes you doubt your own memory, perception or judgment so that you don’t know what you believe anymore and start thinking low of yourself.” The thing had the nerve to glare at Walys as he spoke. “It basically makes you incapable of acting in your own interests and dependent on them for validation and emotional support.”

“I thought it might be something like that,” Rickard Stark mused, as if he wasn’t holding a sword to the neck of the chief advisor he’d nearly beheaded scant moments prior in front of his wife and supposed son of eleven years. “But the word doesn’t make any sense, I’m sad to say. The best I can think of are wisps, those burning balls of gas that mislead people traveling the swamps along the Neck. Failing that, maybe bad air? Like if you interfered with the candle light used to detect whether or not there’s bad air about to addle or kill everyone in a mine. Either way, it’s a stretch at best. And even if it wasn’t, no one outside colliers and crannogmen will ever know what you’re talking about. You should be more careful or people will think you addled, if not mad. Do recall that you talked about being screwed almost a moon before you even made the things.”

The demon opened its mouth, closed it and twisted its face into a grimace. “Baelished by my own brain again,” it muttered. “… I know what you’re doing, Dad.”

“Then you should have little trouble _not_ making me repeat my next question. What do you know about Queen Alysanne?”

The maester drew a blank. What did _that_ have to do with anything?

Perversely, the demon before him seemed to be just as dumbfounded. “… This is going to be like the Children, isn’t it?” It muttered to itself before finally answering and what did he just say? “Alysanne Targaryen was the rider of Silverwing and the queen consort of her brother King Jaehaerys the Conciliator between….” Its brow furrowed as it thought further. “I’m sorry, father. I’m still shit with years.”

Rickard Stark said nothing. Merely continued to sit on the edge of the desk and hold Ice to Walys’ neck while he beheld the boy, waiting.

“They say Alysanne Targaryen learned to read before she was weaned,” the boy-thing said with a frown. “That she was an accomplished archer and hunter and she’d have been sent to the Citadel if she’d been born a man. That she was so high-spirited, charming and intelligent that everyone loved her even without accounting for her charities, highborn and lowborn alike. And when she wasn’t gaining the adoration of all women and men, she spent her time on music, dancing, reading, and flying on her dragon. Every last chronicle agrees that she had a great wit and that she made a powerful impression on those who met her.” The childlike thing grimaced near the end. Self-deprecatingly. “I’m guessing this is where you tell me how biased Septon Barth and all these others were when writing their histories?”

“Alysanne Targaryen is the dumbest bint to ever disgrace the halls of power.” Rickard Stark said as his son’s jaw dropped and wait just a moment, what? WHAT!? “That inbred tart was an egoist to rival Aegon the First and Maegor the Cruel combined. The most self-absorbed of hypocrites. The greatest waste of intelligence history has ever seen. She was, and remains to this day, the most famous of House Targaryen’s useful idiots.”

Brandon Stark gaped in shock at the borderline treason coming out the mouth of its father, then the brat haltingly climbed back in its chair so that its shock didn’t make it fall on its arse on the floor outright.

“She eloped with her own brother against her parents’ wishes, ensuring once and for all that incest became seen as an intrinsic Targaryen failing,” Rickard Stark said, sounding every bit like… like… like Walys himself when he gave a lecture. “Inbreeding aside, this destroyed any chances of the Faith Militant dying with Maegor, by giving its supporters and members a permanent grievance to rally around even after they disbanded, one lasting to this day. It also forced house Targaryen to spend virtually all the dregs of political capital left after the Cruel’s reign, on buying special treatment via the so-called Doctrine of Exceptionalism. Jaehaerys shoulders half the blame for it, but that was just the start of the woman’s _exceptional_ contributions. Do you know what happened right after the death of their mother Alyssa Velaryon?”

The boy tried but ended up shaking its head that he didn’t.

“Alysanne went and intruded on her sister Rhaena at precisely the worst time, then ignored her wishes that she leave and even tried to take her daughter away. This was immediately after Rhaena’s husband had murdered all her lovers and friends before confessing it all and promptly committing suicide to deny her all retribution. Her daughter Aerea was the only thing driving her on. Alysanne effectively destroyed any chances of the woman mending fences with the rest of her family, as might instead have happened if she’d had just let things be until time and Rhaena’s hatred of Dragonstone drover her back into their arms on their own. To say nothing of how much it might have contributed to the decision of Rhaena’s daughter to go get herself killed with the great dragon Balerion. This permanently deprived House Targaryen of one of its most influential figures and dragonrider, _and_ possibly killed the largest ever dragon. Failing that, it could have caused a Dance of Dragons a century earlier if Jaehaerys had been any less a silver tongue. Such a civil war could easily have inflicted more damage than their hold on power could cope with after Maegor, depending on how many dragons were left after. More’s the pity.”

Maester Walys gaped in shock at the man who’d just besmirched the name of the one Targaryen against whom all but the most cantankerous of the Citadel’s Archmaesters had never-

“Alysanne Targaryen was eternally displeased by her husband’s refusal to make Daenerys heir over Aemon, even though she should have known the folly of trying to upturn yet another core tradition of the people she ostensibly wanted to rule justly. Clearly, getting her way on everything else up to that point was not enough for her. It was doubly foolish so soon after they’d spent all their political capital on upturning a major tenet of the Faith of the Seven, as I mentioned previously. Later, she was right to support Septon Barth's plan of constructing wells, pipes, tunnels, and cisterns to provide King's Landing smallfolk with clean water. But she was _not_ right to force an ultimatum upon the Master of Coin and her own husband when they rightly balked at the costs. Can you guess why?”

“He was a priest,” the boy said immediately, as if it was something that had been on its mind before. “He wasn’t qualified for it. He was a priest, not a builder. Or an engineer.”

“Correct. However much he might have learned from his blacksmith father or the Red Keep’s library, Septon Barth was a _septon_. He was not an architect or craftsman or tradesmen or a coin counter. Whatever plan he might have come up with would surely have been riddled with flaws and inefficiencies. The speed with which King’s Landing thereafter degenerated into the sad state of today proves this. If he had anyone helping him on it, they were complete failures or phonies at their job. The proposal should have at most been set aside for expert review over the next few moonturns. But _Good_ Queen Alysanne wanted her victory _now_ , so she served the two men a tankard of river water and challenged them to drink it. Not that the men are blameless for capitulating. Woe the man whose mind is ruled by his emotions. Or, worse, his _wife’s_ emotions. Spineless fools the both of them, but what else can you expect of southron summer children like them?”

If not for the blood slowly welling around the sword blade that was _still_ embedded into the skin of his neck, Walys Flowers would have long since sagged from sheer astonishment in his chair.

“By this point the Good Queen had already done enough to be awarded the crown of fools thrice over, but of course she would not be stopped at just that. The Widow’s Law was innocent enough I suppose. We’ll set aside how vastly she overstated the problem. Or the succession crises it ended up causing all over Westeros. Including the one that gave so much strife to your great grandfather and the rest of his generation, incidentally. But no, what followed was her one, crowning achievement.”

“The Progress to the North,” the boy-thing said when Rickard fell silent and waited for it to speak.

“Her infamous Progress to the North,” Rickard confirmed with a nod. Derisively. “Truth be told, Alaric Stark would have preferred being left well enough alone. He secretly rejoiced when Jaehaerys was detained at King's Landing. Alas, the Good Queen was convinced it would be an insult not to go. So she came North alone. Proceeded to be as southron as possible when judging how we conduct our business, which she did a _lot_ of. Because of course it made sense to judge the North based on our richest smallfolk in the borderline southron-minded White Harbor. Never mind that she only paid attention to the few women who managed to have complaints despite living in the most affluent place of the North. When she later came to Winterfell, she somehow convinced herself Lord Alaric abiding by decorum somehow meant he warmed up to her simply due to her charm and wit, because of course she would. Everyone else in her life did the same, didn’t they? Even Alaric’s daughter Alarra, but more on her later. When Jaehaerys finally came North for all the important talks that ended up not amounting to anything but a slap in our face as usual, Alysanne quickly became _bored_ with the matters of the state she was ostensibly deeply involved in. So she left northwards again. Scared the life out of the smallfolk on the way. I doubt she ever wondered if it wasn’t admiration but fear that made them welcome her and rename their settlements in her so-called honor.”

Was… was he talking about Queenscrown? Preposterous! The smallfolk there changed its name following Alysanne's visit because of how good she was with them. They even painted the merlons atop the holdfast golden to look like the golden crown she had worn during her visit!

“Not satisfied that she’d done enough, the woman then went to the Night’s Watch and started telling them how to do their job. She even used her own jewels to finance an extra castle for them to build as a solution for the Nightfort being just too much for them, poor folk. That Jaehaerys had to later send his _own_ men to build it somehow wasn’t enough of a hint as to how the Watch felt about it. But none of that compares to the last and greatest atrocity she committed before she finally left for the southron pit from whence she came. This, I think, you can well guess.”

“The New Gift.”

“Yes,” Rickard Stark said disdainfully. “She ‘convinced’ Jaehaerys to double the amount of land held by the black brothers.”

Mester Walys flinched in pain as Ice jerked just the slightest bit away from him and out of his flesh as Rickard Stark gripped it tightly by the hilt.

“Never mind that the Night’s Watch had lived and thrived on Brandon’s Gift just fine for eight thousand years. Never mind that the Gift had given them enough to build a surplus when they manned all _nineteen_ of their castles instead of the five back then, let alone their current three. Never mind that the North has the dubious honor of our best farmland being all clustered in the northern-most part of our territory. Her ‘generous’ donation of land that wasn’t hers to give saw the North’s best and most bountiful food source _cut in half_. The woman had the gall to believe Lord Alaric was charmed. House Targaryen had the nerve to pass it on as a good and charitable act. Chroniclers to this day have the _gall_ to pretend we took it lightly. _When it literally doomed the North to generational famine_.” Lord Rickard of House Stark had never looked so dark and terrible and full of _hate_ as in that moment. “If not for the six dragons squatting in our castle. If not for the fact that Alarra Stark was off ‘entertaining’ the Good Queen’s while Jaehaerys ‘finalised’ the ‘agreement’ between our houses, the North would have seceded on the spot.”

Maester Walys… Walys Flowers had no words to say or even think about the sheer sedition he was witnessing.

“The worst thing is that it was all such a waste. The granting of the New Gift only deprived that land of the lordly oversight and protection. It didn’t last five winters. Wildlings could sail around the wall in summer or walk across the ice in winter and raid the lands with impunity. Suddenly, the Black Brothers had to look not just ahead but behind as well. The Night’s Watch could already barely mind its core mission, how did she think it would have the resources or manpower to manage such a swath of land when they couldn’t handle even the Gift any longer? But there’s the thing – _she did not think_. All that supposed intelligence, wasted, because she lacked even the smallest ounce of wisdom. But Jaehaerys, oh, _he_ had wit in spades, and the sort of shamelessness than even his sister couldn’t rival him in. He never missed even the slightest chance to exploit his bitch wife’s atrocious marks. Nor did his pet septon fail to put a wondrous spin back in the south on everything she did. Had we revolted then, not even Dorne would have supported us.”

Maester Walys had thought it would be the work of decades to turn the North’s eyes southwards. Now, as his mind tried and failed to recover from this preposterous interpretation of written history, he was starting to wonder if perhaps it wasn’t the _eyes_ of the North he should have been focusing on.

“You’d think the New Gift would be the crowning achievement of her ignorance, but she was barely back in King’s Landing before she managed to attain an even higher standard of hypocrisy, somehow. The ban on the tradition of First Night. Ha! Jaehaerys certainly spun _that_ into the greatest win that house Targaryen ever had with the smallfolk, that’s for certain. Never mind that house Targaryen practiced First Night so much that half the people on Dragonstone from smallfolk to the Velaryons are their dragonseed bastards. Never mind that the queen’s oh so noble second law has absolutely no teeth _._ My, a highborn took a woman against her will! Their knights do that constantly without censure, while their lords get praises heaped upon them the more bastards they leave behind. There is no provision for actual punishment anywhere. ‘Henceforth a bride's maidenhead will only belong to her husband, whether joined before a septon or a heart tree, and any man, be they lord or peasant, who would forcibly take her on her wedding night or any other night will be guilty of rape.’ That’s _all_ that the law states. And to finish off the good queen’s litany of inbred stupidity, she couldn’t even claim reliance on existing law for methods of censure, seeing as House Targaryen’s decades-long assessment of Westerosi law had barely started at the time.”

Brandon Stark was sitting in front of Rickard Stark, slack-jawed in his chair while staring at him stupidly.

“We allowed the renaming of Queenscrown not as the honor she believed it to be, but as an insult we knew someone as deluded as her would never grasp. We knew it wouldn’t be long before the place was deserted. Save for a small stopover village, the holdfast and surrounding lands have stood empty and barren ever since. What else could happen to something spawned by such a barren mind? Even so, the North still weathered her better than the rest of the realm did. It’s not a cesspool like the capital is nowadays, that’s for certain. Better than her own family, even. You need only think of the disasters that her children ended up becoming later in life. Those that did not get themselves killed or took their own lives over grief at their own poor choices. As terrible as she was as a queen, it wouldn’t shock me to learn she was an even worse mother. But I’ve gone rather far afield I think.”

Ice turned on its edge and lay flat against Walys’ neck. The maester had to sit up and lift his chin so that it couldn’t chip bits off his jawbone.

“Alysanne Targaryen was the stooge through which the Conciliator figured he’d go ahead and play Conciliator with everyone except us.” concluded Rickard Stark his character assassination as he uncoiled his hand from around his sword’s hilt with a grunt. “And it worked out for him and his house _very_ well.”

Maester Walys… didn’t know where to even _start_ on everything that was wrong with what that had just been uttered. In all his time in Winterfell he’d seen no sign of this rabid sentiment. He’d never even suspected that House Stark – that _Rickard_ Stark – would so despise House Targaryen for that one incident. _Any_ one incident. When else did the Targaryens ever bother them? Gods be good, even the _southrons_ didn’t bother them these days. King’s Landing was far too far away to influence the North. The Starks were kings in all but name! In exchange for _nothing_ , the North didn’t have to worry about war against southern kingdoms and they benefitted from abundant trade. Not to mention that the Starks could just marry into southern houses and gain influence like everyone else did. And when was the last time the Sistermen were a thorn to the Northerners? The only nuisance the North even had to worry about at this point were Ironborn raiders, but that was true of the entire west coast!

Rickard Stark just ignored him as before though. Took a deep breath and slowly allowed the tension that had built up in him to seep away before addressing his son again. “I’m telling you all this so you can grasp the fullness of my meaning when I tell you that House Targaryen _accidentally_ harming and insulting us and the North is the anomaly. The only one other such was from Jaehaerys himself. Alaric’s brother Walton only died because Jaehaerys sent Maegor’s former kingsguard to the Wall instead of swinging the sword, the coward. All of our other, many grievances were inflicted knowingly and deliberately and near always from _spite_. When Alaric showed Walton’s grave to the snake, the great _Conciliator_ responded by inflicting upon us our greatest grievance. One wonders the kind of man the so-called saint truly was on the inside. When Dagon Greyjoy was pillaging our west coast, Aerys Targaryen only got off his royal arse _after_ the Ironborn went down to raid the Reach and sack Fair Isle. I suppose he was upset we didn’t join either side of the Blackfyre Rebellion. The first one, because someone _had_ to outdo the bint in terms of inbred stupidity. I suppose ensuring generational warfare was the only way to do it. The only great Stark woe since the Conquest that House Targaryen didn’t directly contribute to was the death of Willam Stark to Raymun Redbeard. But of course, that invasion was only possible because of the accelerated decline of the Watch and the unattended lands of the New Gift itself, both of which are on their shoulders. Now I personally don’t begrudge the king’s peace, but everything else? It’s enough to make one wish the Seven Hells were real so they can all go _burn_.”

“Burn! BURN! **BURN!** ”

The maester felt his heart lurch and he flinched away from the sword even though it didn’t move. His eyes wildly sought Alban up in the shadows, then the still open window where an entire conspiracy of ravens seemed to have gathered while the world swam in madness.

When he spoke again in the eerie atmosphere, Rickard Stark sounded calm and serene as if he’d not just spent the past who knew how long speaking sedition. “What do you know about Rhaenys Targaryen?”


	15. Confirmation Bias Is a Thankless Task (III)

## “-. 273 AC .-“

“What do you know about Rhaenys Targaryen?”

Brandon Stark stared blankly at Rickard Stark. “I’m assuming you mean Aegon’s sister, not the Queen that Never Was.”

“Correct.”

Brandon Stark made the most peevish face Walys had ever seen since leaving the Citadel. “ _Supposedly_ she was graceful, playful, curious, impulsive, and given to flights of fancy, with a mischievous aspect to her personality. She loved music, dancing, and poetry. She loved flying even more, spending more time flying on Meraxes, than her siblings did on their own dragons combined. She’s described as the most beautiful woman ever, with silver-gold hair which she kept long and wore loose, purple eyes, and a slender body. And it’s _said_ that she was the most kindhearted Targaryen of her generation and that she applied that in everything she did while ruling the realm on Aegon’s behalf. Which she and Visenya did pretty much all the time.” An unexpectedly resentful look came over the boy then as he looked over his father’s shoulder instead of the man himself. “I suppose this is where I’m shocked to discover none of that’s true either?”

“She was everything you said.”

Walys blinked and almost slumped in incomprehension despite the sword at his throat. To his seething chagrin, the boy reacted exactly the same.

“She was all of those things,” Rickard Stark said idly. “And yet she still forced a betrothal of Torrhen’s only daughter to the Arryns of all people. There was no one in Westeros at the time whom we disdained more and who hated us more, after the massive loss in trade they suffered due to our sponsorship of the Manderlys and White Harbour. To say nothing of the _thousand years_ of strife before that in the War Across the Water. Wasn’t it strange that the kind Rhaenys was the one who demanded that marriage? Wasn’t it odd that she did so when winter was no longer so far away? You think she didn’t know exactly what words Aegon and the King in the North had exchanged back then? It’s almost like she was trying to give her brother deniability while calling an assumed bluff in his place, wouldn’t you say?”

Brandon Stark blinked owlishly at his lord father. “Father…” The boy asked slowly after a time. “What really happened at the Trident?”

“Torrhen understood what most others only got around to later: however dangerous he was with that dragon of his, Aegon was only middling at war, not particularly exceptional in everything else, and as easily angered as he was blackmailed if you had the right leverage. Torrhen’s opening words as relayed via his maesters were _very_ combative. It was his way of putting himself in front of the dragon’s maw to test on the North’s behalf if Aegon had any capability to control himself, and therefore if Targaryen rule could be borne at all. When his nobles counselled Torrhen to fight, that wasn’t because they were all glory-hounding idiots like the Citadel implies. It was because they were willing to lay down their lives for the long view, like House Stark itself has always done. Septons and Citadel maesters write that the Company of the Rose was established from those who refused to bend the knee. What they never confirmed or denied – possibly because Aegon couldn’t be made to look short-sighted in comparison, I assume – was that it happened with Torrhen’s full approval. In fact, second and further sons of our house and most others were already crossing the narrow sea to Braavos with a large chunk of the ancient treasure hoards House Stark still had at the time. It later became a tradition for our ties with the Rose to be refreshed this way – Artos Stark’s entire branch of our family has lived in Essos since his brother, your great-grandfather Willam, married his second wife.”

“I have cousins in Essos?” The boy blurted in surprise, then he quieted immediately when Rickard’s harsh glare reminded him how recently he’d been told not to interrupt the man.

“Cousins, uncles, other relatives removed. They’re not all sellswords either, or even most of them. They have families, businesses, they even own land here and there. The Company of the Rose is effectively a kingdom in exile sworn to the Crown of Winter, a safeguard in case Stark or the other Northern houses that stayed in Westeros ever go the way of the Gardeners. Had Torrhen chosen to fight, Brandon Snow would have gone to assassinate the dragons, or more likely their riders, and the North would have won the fight in the end. Had Brandon failed to neutralise even one dragon, it would have been a second field of fire and Torrhen would have likely lost his life along with his commanders. But our House would have lived on and so would our command structure. We would have lost the battle but still won the _war_ in the end. All the nobles with him had left heirs at home in case of just that eventuality, and half of Torrhen’s children were already scattered throughout the North ready to wage low war. Even if Aegon somehow took leave of all his sisters’ senses and came up with his entire force despite that little issue down south known as Dorne, the North is far too large to hold. Also, rich in people eager to fight and die in suicide missions instead of going ‘hunting’ in winter. We would still have won no matter how many holdfasts and castles Aegon torched in his anger. I trust you can guess what the swing factor was.”

“… Summer,” Brandon said eventually, despite obviously not knowing the point of any of this anymore. “Winter was coming, but too slowly. If even just one dragon survived, there would be nothing stopping Aegon or his sisters from burning down all our harvests, which were clustered together a lot more back then. Even if we bled them dry and threw them out in the end, the hit to the North’s food supply would have been catastrophic. We’d have won the war but lost the peace.”

“Quite so,” Rickard agreed with a light tap on Ice’s hilt. The faint vibrations travelled all the way to Walys’ brain, somehow. “So he didn’t choose to fight then and there. Instead, Torrhen bled Aegon dry in negotiations and then swore to abide by his vows to the _letter_. He used _our_ wording when he made them. And though the Crown of the North was laid down, the Crown of Winter never was.”

Walys almost couldn’t contain his renewed outrage. What, was the young lord really going to claim they weren’t the same thing?

Rickard smirked mildly, because the answer to that was apparently yes. “It never even occurred to Aegon or his sisters that they weren’t the same thing. And the fact that none of the subjugated nobles with him raised the matter proves how many in Aegon’s new demesne were secretly rooting for us.”

“That…” Brandon Stark breathed, amazed. “So Torrhen only agreed to terms that would let him choose the field and time _later_ if it came down to it. He bent the knee expecting that Aegon or his line would sooner or later break his side of the pact of fealty.”

“Using Rhaenys as a proxy to do just that did not endear him to anyone above the Neck, I’ll tell you that much. A pact is worthless if it’s sworn with those whose words are just wind. With those not worth believing in. I don’t need to tell you which of the oaths that broke, do I?”

“… And justice to all.”

“And justice to all,” Rickard said gravely.

Maester Walys was hard-pressed not to show his aghast disbelief of the two hypocrites before him. He almost couldn’t believe he’d really heard what he thought he heard. It was almost like the eternally oathbound Rickard Stark had just admitted that his ancestors had bent the knee on a false pretense.

“But then…” And of course the demon would taunt him by mimicking his own insights- “Why _didn’t_ Torrhen recant?” But no, the thing had instead chosen to pretend like it didn’t find anything objectionable in Torrhen Stark’s actions at all.

“What do you know of the matter?”

“Only that there are letters at the Citadel implying that Torrhen only agreed to the match after much protest and that his sons refused to attend the wedding.”

“Ah yes. Letters. Implying. Doesn’t say whose. Doesn’t say how. I’m always surprised the Citadel chroniclers chose to be so vague on this, seeing as this is one of the few cases where our house did actually correspond with them directly. Because of course southrons would so easily believe us Northerners not to have even the most basic common sense. Westeros had just been conquered by a foreign power. All laws and pacts prior to that conquest were worth less than the syphilitic cunt of a whore afflicted with leprosy. If Alaric never found any leverage during the New Gift cockup, there was never going to be any at a time when the conquest technically hadn’t even finished.”

“… What did happen then?”

“Torrhen was stalling for winter while he finished decentralizing his logistics and communicated with his banners and envoys across the Narrow Sea. Then his daughter eloped on her own because she wanted peace, his youngest son helped her because the dragons scared him, and word came from Essos that Brandon Snow had disappeared.” Walys Flowers blinked rapidly at the sudden turn in the story. The switch in mood in those last words would have given Walys whiplash if not for the sword at his throat still keeping him in place. “One of those would have sparked anger. Two could have been borne. But all of them at once? By the time Torrhen caught up to her, by the time it could be ascertained that Brandon Snow’s disappearance _hadn’t_ had anything to do with Aegon or his cronies, the fool girl was already in the Vale and Torrhen’ window of opportunity had passed completely. And so we stayed subdued, the craven son was delivered into exile by his remaining siblings, and the daughter married the boy-king only to be murdered by Jonos Arryn’s rebels before the year was past. I can only hope she went peacefully.” Rickard Stark’s gaze on his son no longer seemed friendly in the least. “All because children thought they knew better. All because they went over their father’s head. Like _you_ just did with _me_.”

Brandon Stark gaped at his father, completely taken aback.

Then the boy slowly sagged in his chair as words and revelations came together in his mind so quickly that even Walys couldn’t read all of them. But he didn’t need to, did he? Long-winded or not, it turned out Rickard Stark’s entire lecture had been wholly meaningful.

“Oh,” the son said weakly.

“Yes,” the father said flatly. “Oh.”

Brandon Stark visibly shrunk in his chair.

“Generally, when someone thinks they’ve hoodwinked you, the best immediate path forward is to let him believe it so you don’t actually have to promise anything. It leaves you free to cooperate and oppose as you see fit. But the key word is that it’s only the best _immediate_ path forward. You _know_ this, son. You don't try to win a game with a master, especially when he’s the one who sets the rules. You flip the table over and stab him in the chest when he's distracted by the pieces falling around him.”

The bottom of Walys’ stomach seemed to fall away as an inkling finally dawned on him of why he was even being allowed to act as witness to all this. It wasn’t that Rickard Stark was teaching him a lesson. It was that Walys himself _was_ the lesson. The maester had never felt so condescended to or disrespected. He’d also never felt true terror before, but the lump of ice in his lungs and belly could hardly be called anything else.

“Yesterday at dawn I sent you a summons but you were nowhere to be found in the Great Keep. Since I’d let you off training beforehand, I let it be. But I also sent for you at noon while you toiled in your workshop cellar, and you yelled at the servant that you were busy without even coming to the door. Then, in the evening, you either ignored me or didn’t hear me call for you and knocking on the door.”

“… I was skinchanging,” the boy rasped shamefully, face buried in his hands. “I’d barely gotten any rest yesterday night and I worked and skinchanged the whole day yesterday and… now I’m just making excuses. Fuck.”

“You weren’t skinchanging. You were asleep. I was the one who carried you to bed.”

Brandon flinched.

“I invited you and your mother to sit in on this game so we’d all be here when I discussed this whole matter with the good maester here.” Lord Stark’s words were calm and steady and completely merciless.

The boy’s head, which had steadily dropped the more his father spoke, was now bowed as low as it could go.

“Son, look at me.”

Slowly, torturously, the boy did.

Rickard held out an arm entreatingly and motion to come hither. “Come here.”

Brandon Stark stumbled out of his chair and went to stand before his father almost in a daze, except he wasn’t so much shaken as mortified. Seven curse him, Walys couldn’t spot even the slightest sign of artifice in it.

Rickard Stark laid a hand on his son’s head. Firmly. “You’re not the only one who’s been watching through raven’s eyes.”

Walys felt the ground fall out from under him.

“I…” The boy’s voice wavered almost hoarsely as he failed to say the words he wanted. “Fuck,” the boy tried but couldn’t hold his father’s gaze so he closed his eyes and dropped his head again until it lay on his father’s knee. “I messed everything up, didn’t I?”

“You did.” Rickard Stark stroked his son’s head. “I’d hoped this could be postponed until I finished handling a matter out east. I was in error to do so. I should have looked closer to home from the moment I first overshadowed the mind of a raven for the first time. My priorities were gravely unsound in hindsight and you are right that this issue has laid undiscovered and unresolved for far too long. But I also meant to let all parties air what all they had to air and unravel this issue with at least some modicum of grace. Instead, decorum was trampled over, you nearly made us into a line of oathbreakers, and the shock of finding out she’s dying in such a ghastly manner now has your mother crying all alone in the hopes she’ll manage to recover the strong front she always puts in front of you and your siblings.”

Brandon Stark covered his head in his hands then crossed his arms over one another in his father’s lap as if he could hide his face more than he already had.

“It is the curse of our house that others will always be the first to break faith with us. That’s what happens when you never do that yourself. Sometimes we can use it to prepare for betrayals and put upstarts in their place as legends did in olden days. But other times, those who break faith are our own children. And so are born new cautionary tales, telling us bluntly and plainly why the world is no song or story.”

For all his revulsion, Walys couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight before him, of Brandon Stark literally being taught the ugly side of rule at his father’s knee.

The man’s voice changed then, his tone and cadence less like himself but more than it usually was, somehow. “’Do not talk down to me, boy. I’ve bent neither knee yet, nor will I ever to a fool that doesn’t know a dragon from a hammer. You think you and yours are new to me and mine? My forebears have ruled as kings unbroken since the elder days, when firewyrms and flying lizards like yours prowled and nested from the Summer Sea to Land of Always Winter. Dragons come and go. They’ll come and go again long after the world is free of pretentious children like you and your witch sisters. Think yourself the first upstart with delusions of grandeur? There have been many like you, yet none of what they built has ever lasted beyond three centuries. Try to take my crown and I will kill your dragons. Try to burn my army and I’ll kill your sister-wives and _then_ your dragons. Even if I don’t get them all, I’ll spread the knowledge of how to do it to every corner of the world. Bring war to the North and I’ll have you chasing smoke from one ocean to the other while your army starves in burned fields and dies to the cold and poisoned well water. Kill me and my sons will do it in my stead. Half are waiting for you scattered to all corners of the mighty lands I rule beyond the marshes. Try to find them! Freeze your years away burning farms and stone towers. My other sons will just make common cause with your many other enemies. They’ll come sailing back from Essos with coin and scorpions and every last sellsword the Free Cities are hiring even now. The Century of Blood is all they see of your kind’s legacy, they’ll pay through the nose to prevent the return of that hell known as Valyria. And don’t think I don’t know how petty you are in victory, after you tarnished the name of a man so much older and wiser and more accomplished than you. Argilac Durrandon was your better in every way, proven through both long peace and war across two continents. And you had the gall to shit all over his reputation and then sully his legendary line with bastard blood. Try to besmirch my good name and I’ll turn all my wargs and greenseers to aid those at your back, who _hate_ you and yours for how you swooped and burned and murdered your way into power over their mothers’ and fathers’ corpses. Try with me what you did to the Storm King, and my sons will dig out all our tombs and barrows and every last treasure hoard built over the last eight thousand years. Then they’ll pay the House of Black and White to put the name Targaryen down on the lists of the Faceless Men for the next ten generations. These are the words of myself, Torrhen of House Stark, King of Winter, King in the North, Lord of the First Men and Green Men and the Children True, Steward of Vows New and Ancient. Now go ahead and speak yours, dragonlord. Tell me why Winter should let the North bide under the auspices of Summer, for a time.”

Maester Walys… Walys Flowers just… He just stopped. He knew the words. He was familiar with their individual meanings. But of the order they’d just been spoken in… he couldn’t make any sense at all. All he heard was pride and madness and empty boasts.

When Brandon Stark raised his head to look up at his father, Walys almost couldn’t gather his thoughts fast enough to consider him. When he finally managed it, he didn’t know how to feel on seeing in him that same brittleness that he himself had so carefully cultivated and taken advantage of in the boy’s father for all those years. But Rickard Stark didn’t take advantage of it. He just sat and waited as the window of opportunity passed him by, even though he’d just lamented his ancestor being forced to do just that. The man sat stroking his son’s cheek and let the boy gather his wits for as long as he needed to shore up his frayed nerves and master himself again. Walys could almost see the moment when the boy accepted what he’d just heard and started forming his own opinions about it, instead of being fed one as his father would have been wise to do. Either Rickard Stark had always been a foolish idealist beyond Walys’ worst estimations, or he hadn’t learned anything from Walys at all.

Or that was the maester’s thought, until he actually moved his eyes from the boy to the man and found Rickard Stark already gazing at him. Pointedly. Disdainfully, almost, before the man dismissed him and resumed his regard of his firstborn. “That these words lie empty and worthless is the greatest shame and failure of our lineage. That’s without the added quandary that the entire mess also undermined every other valid secession clause thrown in our face thereafter. For want of a craven and girl’s lack of sense, history was changed and instead of Torrhen Dragonbane we got the King who Knelt. All for nothing.” Rickard Stark reached under his son’s chin and made him look up until his eyes couldn’t be avoided. “Don’t make a second Torrhen out of me, my son.”

Brandon Stark couldn’t hold his father’s gaze any better than he had during that whole oration. As soon as he was released, he dropped his gaze again. And when he spoke, his voice was faint. Feeble even. “I really am an idiot aren’t I?”

“No you’re not, my clever, clever boy,” the man smiled fondly and gently stroked his son’s head. “You just trust my judgment even less than I trust yours. Not entirely without reason. It’s my fault for giving you such low expectations over so many years. I took far too long in beginning to suspect the good maester here as well. And when I gained the means to look at inward matters without casting suspicions, I chose to gaze outward instead. Nevertheless, you decided to force this confrontation because you thought I was in his grip all this time. You underestimate me, son. Whatever I feel about your judgment, I’ve never questioned the worth of your information. Not once. And you overestimate him and underestimate yourself in all the ways you shouldn’t. How could you possibly think his hold on me could ever measure up to yours?”

Brandon Stark’s head flew up in astonishment, then the boy flushed in total embarrassment.

For some unholy reason, that shocked the maester most out of everything he’d seen and heard that day. That... that was just such an authentically _childish_ thing to do.

“You are good and kind and you will make the North strong,” Rickard told his progeny, then tapped his brow with the back of his fingers. “But up here you’re still fragile. It’s not just about you anymore either, if others are beginning to catch glimpses of what comes through.”

That… sounded like rather more than just… Walys didn’t even know.

The boy didn’t seem to put his mind to it though. He just leaned into his father’s touch, quiet and almost timid. Forlorn even. “I’m sorry I keep disappointing you, father.”

“I forgive you,” Rickard Stark said. Then something like amusement actually showed on his face. “Chin up son, instead of one moonturn I got to be proud of you for almost a year this time.”

Brandon Stark succumbed to uncontrollable burst of laughter, despite himself. It was loud and short and watery and ended almost as abruptly as it started, but at the end of it the boy seemed to stand lighter, even if his mood just settled into the same, grim thing his father conveyed now.  
“How long have we been preparing for war?”

The sudden turn in the conversation felt like a club to the face. The change in topic was even worse, like egg-sized balls of hail on his bare skull. Despite that, the maester was perversely glad for it. Far be it from him to call attention to his presence during these talks of secrets.

Rickard’s gaze only thawed though, somehow. “We’re always just one step removed from war.” The man sighed, but firmed again almost immediately. “Your grandfather would have broken us away during the long winter. Let them try to hold us amidst blizzards and snowfall. Our people would have gladly fought a winter war instead of starving to death as so many were by the middle of it. But then Aegon V send us twenty times our taxes’ worth in food despite the complaints of the Tyrells and many others. Even the Karstarks and Umbers couldn’t stomach the thought of secession after that, not as long as it was him up on that ugly chair.”

“… The North remembers,” Brandon murmured

“The North remembers.”

“And then Summerhall happened,”

“And then Summerhall happened,” Rickard agreed with a grave nod. “The only reason we aided Jeahaerys in the War of the Ninepenny Kings was to clear that debt of honor. Then Edwyle Stark and Jaehaerys Targaryen died in the same year. So now it’s our turn to live with the knowledge that House Targaryen has never gone more than a generation without inflicting on us some major wrong. The next to come will not be borne.”

“And you think it will come in our lifetime,” the boy said, sounding not even half as despairing as he should have been, Walys thought darkly. Or even all that surprised.

“I can only hope it will be in _my_ lifetime so that the burden of past debts does not fall wholly on you,” the man told his son. His soft tone was at odds with that expression of resignation. “Or that’s what I would say, if I had any choice other than to lay part of that burden on your shoulders right now. You know why. Don’t you?”

“… Fostering Eddard at the Eyre gets us the Vale,” Brandon Stark said as he stood away from his father, defeated. “Jon Arryn is already fostering Robert Baratheon, so if Ned befriends him we’ll get the Stormlands _and_ the Vale. Between me and Lyanna, even Benjen, that’s three or more of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“You’re also convinced your mother is dying of consumption,” Rickard threw in as if it didn’t weigh on him at all, something which the boy didn’t seem to appreciate. Somehow, Walys couldn’t muster the amusement he should have felt from that. “If Winterfell sees a second outbreak, she and you and I and everyone else may well be dead this time next year.”

Brandon Stark was just as grim. “But House Stark will at least live in Ned.”

“That could just as easily be done by sending him to the Cerwyns or elsewhere of course. I mean to have Lyanna and Benjen vacation there until this ends one way or another. But to not leverage Eddard… That would just be ignoring reality.”

“And then the consequences of ignoring reality will eat us alive.” The boy started to pace restlessly as his words continued, uncaring of who was there to see. “The Vale would give us a near unassailable redoubt and force projection across half the Narrow Sea. The Stormlands would give us a major distraction right next to the capital and force projection across the _other_ half of the Narrow Sea. Say either me or Benjen is tied to a Northern house so our bannermen don’t get any wrong ideas. You’d still have one groom to spare, and could then bind Lyanna to the Reach or the Lannisters-“

“And this is where you once again begin to overreach and misjudge me, as usual,” Rickard said flatly. It was enough to strike Walys and the demon-boy both silent. He seemed to be doing a lot of that, Walys thought grimly. “The Tyrells are more likely to hold a daughter of our house hostage for the Iron Throne, marriage or not. And Tywin Lannister butchered two families down to their infant children and has put personal ambitions over everyone up to his own king ever since. My trust in his willingness to abide by the terms of a marriage alliance are even lower than my belief in his ability to raise a son that could treat my daughter well.”

“… You’d be surprised,” Brandon Stark muttered unexpectedly, not looking at anyone. “And if you’re going to say that, you’ll have to rule out the Tully sisters too. One of them will probably get me killed and the other one won’t even bother before she poisons me herself.”

Maester Walys couldn’t fathom what the demon-boy was rambling about now. The very idea he had any worthwhile input was already absurd, but to spout such outlandish claims about two girls barely a few name days old was-

“We’ll talk.”

Walys was astounded. His neck scraped painfully against the Valyrian edge, drawing a wince and making him pull his dropped jaw back up to grit his teeth instead.

Somehow, though, the boy-thing seemed even more astounded than he was. “Dad, did you just…?”

Rickard sighed, then eyed his firstborn ruefully. “I wish I could just order you to stop relying solely on yourself. It’s given you a blind spot relative to everyone else. Not least of all me. So let me make my meaning plain. It took much hindsight before it came to me, but it came to me. Anagrams are not subtle. I _understand_ , son.”

Walys _didn’t_ understand. At all!

But it was plain the boy absolutely did because a look of raw, vulnerable hope abruptly stole over his face and Brandon Stark suddenly seemed like he could be blown away by the faintest breeze. That was the sort of weight his father’s words seemed to take off his shoulders, however nonsensical. “Dad… You… I…”

“I’m here now, Brandon. I _am_ listening now. I _am_ watching now. I will always listen to you, my son, no matter what you have to say. So please. Don’t do this again. Come to me first, no matter what it is.”

The boy suddenly looked about to cry. “Dad…”

“Ah-ah!” Rickard Stark abruptly poked him in the middle of his forehead. The boy almost fell on his arse. “No losing your composure in public. We are the Starks of Winterfell. Noble in peace, terrible in war, and always self-possessed in our bearing. Hold it in till later, when we’re in private. We’ll hug it out properly then.”

But being told that only made the boy’s composure worsen. “I… Oh come on, Dad, you think you can just-”

“I can.”

“You think I can just-“

“You can.”

“That’s not what I-” Composure lost, the boy literally started sniffling as tears leaked from his eyes. “Right. Right! I can do that.” Except he didn’t, because he failed miserably to do precisely that. “I _can_ do that. I _will._ ” But the boy’s effort to swallow his tears and put up a valiant front was absolutely pathetic. Heartfelt. Too earnest by half.

Walys felt sick just watching it.

“Go on now, son,” Rickard said, wiping his son’s tears away. “The maester and I have unfinished business.”

“I…” But Brandon Stark seemed to finally realise that he didn’t have anything worthwhile to say. “Alright.”

Rickard Stark nodded in satisfaction, then abruptly removed the sword from Walys’ neck and dropped it on the back of the chair next to the _other_ side of his neck, as if a barrier between his son and him. Then he nudged the boy towards the door.

Walys Flowers’ mind raced madly as the boy made his way to the door. He had a lot to think about. He had a lot to _quickly_ think about _._ Chiefly, what he could glean from the words spoken here about himself. What Lord Rickard knew about him and, more critically, what he _didn’t_ know about him. Couldn’t know. Couldn’t suspect. Ever. No matter how much Lord Rickard had spied through the eyes of his most trusted friend and companion, it could only go so far if there was nothing to see. It didn’t sound like the young lord had suspected him for more than a few moonturns, if that. Walys had sent and received less than a handful of his private correspondence in that time, and they were as vague and roundabout as ever even accounting for the cipher. He’d also always burned them immediately after. There was a good chance Rickard Stark didn’t know anything certain beyond the fact that his maester didn’t work _entirely_ alone. If it was true that this was the first time the boy confronted Lord Stark on it, the young lord may not even suspect the extent of their numbers and organisation. Which he well shouldn’t, considering that Walys himself had only acquired that information through his own deductions and guesswork.

It was Walys Flower’s own curse that even the hope of finally being free of the demon’s presence was one he wouldn’t get to enjoy. The boy stopped after passing him by, stepped back and looked Walys in the eye. Sullenly. “I’m not a demon you know. I'm unnatural and strange and I was self-aware since before I was even born, but I'm not a demon and I stole no one's body or life. It's me. It's always been me.”

It sounded like a condemnation and confession and offer of peace all in one, but Walys could only wonder why the boy thought it could make any difference now. All the man could think about was that even then the boy had stopped just barely outside his stabbing reach, sword at his neck or not. The Maester could only hope that was the last he heard of his mind-twisting words, at least for a while.

Unfortunately, that hope proved to be as vain as all the ones before.

“What should I tell mother?” The voice came from right next to the door.

“Tell her I’ll be with you both within the hour.” Rickard Stark answered, then turned thoughtful. “Unless that raven I’m expecting proves a better flier than I think it is. Then it might take a while longer.”

“Raven? If you think I should even know I mean.”

“It’s no great secret, the line of the Red Kings is ended,” Rickard Stark said with an idle shrug and wait, what?

“Dad, what?”

He hated agreeing with demons on anything but by the Seven, what!?

“Whatever they were doing up in the Dreadfort that called justice down on them must have been quite ghoulish,” Lord Rickard of House Stark said as cool as a glacier. “I’d ask someone in the Rose, but the Boltons never consented to sending anyone of their line there, more’s the pity. I can’t imagine it would happen just for breaking a law of men. Or women in this case. Lord Bolton was about to initiate his son Roose into the custom of First Night. Then their horses threw them from the saddle within heartbeats of each other and accidentally trampled each of them on the back of the head five times, terrible business.”

The maester stared up at Lord Stark, slack-jawed.

“Dad… Dad holy _shit_!”

“I love you, son. Off with you now. And no watching or eavesdropping.”

“Holy shit, Dad, holy shit.”

The door opened and closed.

And Seven damn it to the Seven hells, he could and _would_ still work with this. Even if he had to pretend to betray his oh so dark and looming masters, he could work with this. In fact, there had been times and tests with his Archmaester Father when he’d made do with less.

“Gods, I’ll be a shit parent to the others if that boy spoils me much longer,” Rickard Stark fondly mused once the footsteps faded entirely. “A bleeding heart is what he is. Wonder how long it’ll take for him to realize I never said _how_ long I’d been fooled. Oh well, I’ll make a lesson out of it and then indulge whatever new invention he’s made by then so he doesn’t lose heart.”

“That was the most biased croc of shit I’ve ever heard,” Walys uttered suddenly, not entirely unplanned. If anything would throw the young man off, it was blunt honesty.

It didn’t throw him off at all. “Croc of shit, no. Biased? I’m only a man, of course it was! But so is everyone else who ever had something to say about our business, only in the other direction. I’d say it cancels out quite neatly.” Rickard Stark slipped off the desk and finally pulled Ice away, but only to put its tip right beneath Walys’ chin. “The dagger up your sleeve. The bottles in the _pockets_ of your sleeves. The vials in the belts around your legs. On the table. All of them. Now.”

“Y-you’d have me lift my robes to my neck like some whore?”

“That or I cut it off of you completely, possibly with various bits and pieces of you depending on how tired my arms have grown this past while. Just so I don’t mistakenly behead you when you reach for some surely harmless pouch or other, you understand.”

Face burning, the Maester divested himself of his knife and emptied his sleeves and pulled at his robes as if a woman bundling up her skirts until he was completely bare of all his tools and his potions and pouches. He still ended up feeling naked when he was done.

Only then did Rickard Stark sit back in his chair across the game table. There, he lifted one foot to rest on his knee and laid his sword upon it as if to symbolise the new barrier between the two of them. “Maester, maester, maester. What ever will I do with you?”


	16. Confirmation Bias Is a Thankless Task (IV)

## “-. 273 AC .-“

For a man who’d obviously intended his last question as rhetorical, Rickard Stark seemed to be taking far too much time following up on it. Maester Walys normally moved in on such instances with a non-sequitur. It allowed him to make a point of his own which, though barely tangential to the matter at hand, would nonetheless allow him to push and tug at his _own_ points that needed making. Often he even managed to make it seem like he was following through on points the young lord himself had made before, whether or not that was the case.

Considering that he’d just seen the man use that same technique on his demon son, however, Walys decided it probably wouldn’t serve him well in this case. Unfortunate. Silence fit him rather poorly now and here, when it wasn’t himself that imposed it.

That he swam in a tide of far too slowly dissipating fear wasn’t helping. At least he believed it was mainly fear. There was an undercurrent of… something which he wore even more poorly.

Fortunately, the maester was old hat at giving highborn their seeming concessions. “Setting up your next lecture, my lord?”

“I’m contemplating appearances,” Rickard replied, not taking the bait. Or perhaps taking it too well. “Books and songs and stories are chock full of warnings about unassuming creatures that will kill you when you get near. Yet none of them seem to acknowledge the one, big thing that undermines all of their parables.”

The undercurrent grew heavy. “Which is?”

“We are _men_ , not beasts.”

The undercurrent grew heavy and insistent _._ “…I fail to see your meaning.”

“Don’t you really? I suppose I shouldn’t blame you, seeing as your chain lacks any antimony. Your predecessor though, I learned a surprising amount about the wilds from him. Among them was an interesting bit about something called warning coloration.”

“Ah,” Walys could see what he was saying, and the point taking shape. Somehow, though, it only made his strange disquiet stronger. “Animals that are foul, poisonous, thorny or otherwise difficult to kill and eat tend to advertise it to potential predators though conspicuous coloration, sounds, odours or other traits.” The maester gave Rickard Stark his usual, unimpressed look, hoping it masked the fretful way his true feelings churned inside him. “I hope your point is going to be better than ‘let’s judge books by their cover’ my lord.”

“People who use that argument are the same ones who conveniently forget that fable revolves around the _exception_ , not the rule.” _Translation: What are you, maester? An exception, or the rule?_ “The state of a book’s cover says more about what sort of people live nearby than its contents, but let’s not divert from the point.”

“You’ve yet to make one, my lord.”

“Warning coloration. It’s not just the troublesome beasts and critters that use it, now is it?”

Deflection failed. Walys wished he could claim it was unexpected. “… Prey mimicry,” He said when it became clear that it wasn’t just a rhetorical question this time. “Some animals will sometimes resemble one of the troublesome beasts closely enough to share the protection.”

Rickard Stark beheld him, eyes unreadable as they ever were. “It’s making me think about how people put on appearances. Nobles in the Seven Kingdoms drape themselves in velvets, silks, and samites of a hundred hues whilst peasants and smallfolk wear raw wool and dull brown roughspun. In Braavos it’s the opposite, according to everyone who ever sends words back from there: bravos swagger about like colourful peacocks fingering their swords, whilst the mighty dress in charcoal grey and purple, blues that are almost black, and blacks as dark as a moonless night. On the surface it might seem like it’s a difference in culture. But I have to admit I’m starting to wonder if perhaps there aren’t certain parties in Westeros who fancy that there isn’t much difference from things across the sea. Or that there _shouldn’t_ be.”

Walys sat back in his chair and smothered his impulse to reach up and rub at his neck wound. “I’m afraid you still haven’t made whatever point you’re making, my lord.”

“No matter how many nobles get themselves killed or disgraced due to how much they love to pretend they’re their house sigils, we are _men_ , not beasts. Proud airs aren’t all we can confect. It’s just as easily within our ability to pretend _weakness_.”

_Translation: Are you a grey rat or just a rat?_

Fear pounded in his ribcage, but Walys smothered it with sheer indignation. Barely, but he managed. Did the young man really think he’d incriminate himself when _he’d_ yet to hint at what little he knew about Walys’ business? The maester made sure his silence conveyed the appropriate amount of vexation.

Rickard Stark didn’t seem particularly impressed, but he did break first. “Do you remember the first thing that happened upon your arrival to my castle?”

Or maybe break was the wrong word. “You gave me bread and salt.”

“Yes,” the man said, again with that long, unreadable gaze of his. Of all the traits of the young lord, that unbreakable facade was the one Walys had always hated. For the simple fact that Rickard Stark had never had to work a single day for it. If he’d at least have had to- “Did you ever wonder why I never followed up with the traditional maester swearing in ceremony?”

Even having built up to it, the question still surprised him. “… Sometimes in the beginning, not so much as the years went by,” the maester made no effort to hide his disbelief. “If you’re going to claim you’ve always suspected me of something or other, you’ll have a hell of a time convincing me, My Lord.”

“Oh no, that was just me being a conceited, mistrustful and bitter little shit.” Those… Those words had no business being said in such a bland, no-nonsense voice. “’You’ve such trouble trusting yourself, my boy,’ my father told me on his deathbed. ‘If you feel you can’t trust your own judgment, gild yourself in what trappings and rules you need to act by highest law.’ I had nothing but _contempt_ for you, Walys. For all you maesters and the Citadel that spawned you. I thought you all incompetent. Frauds and failures with too high an opinion of yourselves. If I’d taken you fully into my service then, if I didn’t let you abide under guest protections – if I didn’t impose the bounds of Guest Right on _myself_ – I’d have executed you at the first offense or hint of failure, no matter how minor.”

The admission was like a spray of snow on his bare skin. “You cannot mean…”

“You’d have been dead within the moon.”

Walys couldn’t entirely contain his reaction at the words. At the mild manner in which they were spoken. At the fact that even now he couldn’t read into the young lord’s gaze at all. He shuddered.

“Later, after I executed Cassel, my disparagement of myself was only reinforced. So I let things lie as they were. After that, the matter was buried under everything else I had to mind, which I already had trouble keeping up with due to how frail may will had gone. A lot of things slipped my mind all these years. For a long time, it was either work the day away or dwell on my failure as a man and a husband and father. I was in despair, then soul weary, then outright obsessive. That I _wasn’t_ wrong in my read of the Cassel situation is something I only learned about a year ago, more or less.”

Walys Flowers… almost didn’t know what to say to that. “Rodrik Cassel was a good man.” Almost. “An honourable knight, faithful and true.”

“Yes. Cassel was loyal. To his code, his beliefs and _then_ me. Just like you. Just like everyone like you.” Whatever indulgence or patience had lingered in Rickard Stark’s eyes dimmed almost entirely. Walys was surprised he was allowed to see through it. “It’s not the most standout realisation I’ve ever had, but it’s up there.”

The maester was suddenly acutely aware of the sweat coating his brow and pooling at the edges. “My order serves.”

“Yes.” Tap, tap, tap went the lord’s fingers drumming on the smoky blade of the sword in his lap. “The realm. _Then_ Winterfell. _Then_ me.”

The younger, gormless him would have disagreed. He’d also have missed his window of opportunity because of the inner panic he had to so frantically stave. “Lord Stark, double speak has always been something you wear poorly. Speak plainly if we’re to have any sort of peace.”

“I will do the former, for the latter can now never be.”

Maester Walys was taken aback, both at the reply as well as the bizarre feeling that they’d had this conversation before.

“…My lord, please. Say what you want to say.”

“It’s all in the vows themselves, Maester. Yours, not mine.”

Walys sighed, the put-upon mien coming upon him wholly naturally after so many talks that took similar turns in the past. “I think I can speak for both of us what I say neither of us has the patience for further games today. I know I don’t.”

“Perhaps you should, seeing as we are dancing around the proof that the North has perhaps changed much more than you sought.”

Feeling became fact on finally remembering when and why they’d had a conversation before. The undefinable disquiet underlying the dread he was holding in suddenly bubbled to the surface and he could see it for what it was. Uncertainty.

Uncertainty that he was even leaving that room alive.

“It’s a matter that has been heavy on my mind these past two moons.” Two moons. Two moons. Just two moons. He could still- “Your vows are as absolute as they are interpretable. The order of maester serves, yes, but whom? The realm. _Then_ the castle. _Then_ its lord and master.” Walys almost couldn’t suppress his reaction at hearing Rickard Stark repeating himself deliberately, however obliquely. “So long as I hold Winterfell you are bound by oath to give me counsel to the best of your ability, but not to the best of your _intent_ or, more importantly, _my_ intent. It’s made me wonder about accepting you into the household fully. The authority that would give you. To decide _for_ me and mine. Based on _your_ judgment and goals, rather than mine or my family’s. You maesters always end up knowing the affairs and the bodies and the family secrets of those you serve. But you have no incentive of solidarity to go with the enormous power that gives you. Compared with, say, the captain of my guards whose fate is intimately tied to my own, you maesters come as strangers and might leave for another position. You have no blood ties with the men you serve. Yet your authority has grown to near my own in places, our very wellbeing above all else. Sounds like it could make a mess of right and wrong and the rightful penalties for wrongdoing, doesn’t it?” Somehow, Rickard Stark’s tone didn’t change even slightly. “How fortunate for us both that Guest Right lets me sidestep all of these problems.”

The maester swallowed dryly as a bead of sweat dripped down his face. His tongue tied itself in knots as the drop slowly slid down his cheek and then further, until it reached his bloody wound. The salt stung. “You’d make such a great matter out of a stripling’s half-baked suspicion?” Walys croaked out. “The last time a man did that, you executed him.” Walys realized too late what he’d just said, but Rickard Stark didn’t use the opening at all.

“No. I’m doing it based on my own. _‘Over half of the poisons I know are made that way,’_ you said.” Walys barely managed not to flinch at hearing his own, private words thrown back at him. “The irony is that even then I was ready to take it at face value. I never dwelt on the matter of poisons and maesters, as you would _have_ to know of such things in order to deserve your silver link. But now it turns out you could have alleviated my wife’s illness from the beginning but chose not to. _Chose_ not to.” Somehow, the fact that the man still hadn’t raised his voice in anger still terrified the maester. “It makes literally no difference that you have that secret stash. You then outright _tried_ to murder my son and then my wife-”

“Lord Stark-“

“Interrupt me again and I kill you.”

The maester’s words stuck in his throat.

“You tried to kill my wife, and then I had to spend two moonturns – _after_ finding out it’s my son and heir you really want – stewing in my own hatred and helplessness over knowing I couldn’t in good conscience jeopardise my wife’s recovery now that you were actually helping her.”

Seven curse them both, what next was the man going to twist into the worst possible shape?

“You’ve been very good at your job, Maester. Both of them.” Rickard said coldly. Somehow the man _still_ hadn’t exploded in anger. “If not for that bizarre argument with Brandon when you accused _him_ of trying to poison Lyarra, I never would have never suspected you. I’d never have diverted my attention from that other matter enough to look in on you at all. But that was less than two moonturns ago. Ten moonturns _after_ the misunderstanding was cleared up, that had been preventing me from finally settling the matter of your place in my household. Ten moonturns on top of ten years where I never suspected any duplicity from you but didn’t bring up the matter regardless. All because I thought I’d wrongly executed a man and didn’t want to do it again. Rodrik Cassel’s ghost has been guiding me all this time in a way, wouldn’t you say?”

Walys didn’t know _what_ he was supposed to say.

“Still, that leaves the past ten moonturns. Or nine, if you want to be technical. Do you know why I never broached it since?”

“…No.”

“You just won’t stop cheating!”

Walys Flowers flinched back in his chair as he finally learned what Rickard Stark sounded with voice raised in anger, though even then it didn’t last beyond the moment.

The Lord of the North settled back in his chair, tapping softly on Ice while he gazed at the maester silently for a time. “I’m a slow learner. It’s true. But I learn.” The words felt like a prophecy already ruined beyond recovery. “And what lessons I do learn I make a point to apply immediately.”

“…I was waiting for you to call me out on it,” Walys rasped. It wasn’t even a lie.

“And I was waiting for you to confess this last shred of fakery so I could finally reach out to you in friendship.”

Maester Walys Flowers stared at Lord Rickard of House Stark, dumbstruck.

“I don’t trust many people,” the nobleman said grimly. _But you were ready to trust me?_ “But I do strive to return the faith I am shown.” _And the lack of it_ rang loud in the wake of that. “I reserve my friendship for my equals, of which there are few, and my superiors, of which there are none. Yet. Think well what that means when I say I was ready to take you into my confidence. Regarding _everything_ short of those things only privy to those of my line. But then you went and tried to kill my wife. Even pretended ignorance at what was killing her beforehand. All because you think my son should die out of some zealous southron delusion. And I’m sure you have reams of blandishments and admonishments and arguments ready to explain and dismiss and convince me otherwise. To bring me back to your way of thinking like you did every other time in my life. To convince me that it was all for the greater good because my son is some sort of demon from your seven hells, is that right?”

To hear it spoken aloud made it sound mad. The quiet that followed was damning. To answer would have been even more damning, even if the nobleman was right on every count.

Rickard waited. “…No excuses then?” The man rapped and rapped and rapped on the symbol of broken hospitality. “No explanations? No arguments and deflections? No attempt to bring me around to your way of thinking like you always do? Successfully too.” The nobleman tilted his head, some strange mood passing over him briefly. “No attempt to sell out one or some or all of whatever handlers you may or may not have? As part of this conspiracy that may or may not exist outside of my son’s too rich imagination? Come now maester, give me _something_ to work with. Even if you fear I’ll react to whatever it is unduly, I have much more patience for obstinacy than I used to.”

“And what if I don’t have anything to give?” Walys asked bitterly. For someone who just said one shouldn’t play a game with a master, Rickard Stark certainly seemed poised to attempt just that. The maester hadn’t expected to be pre-emptively rebuffed so harshly. Hadn’t thought he’d ever have his guidance spurned so totally. He never imagined it would hurt this much. “Even if I miraculously knew what you wanted to hear, would you even be satisfied?”

“Certainly not. Words are wind, and the wind from the mouth of liars is especially foul. Better would have been to pretend ignorance and spy on you until I got all I could from your duplicity. Perhaps while also sending my wife and children away to visit someone or other. Alas, even those half-baked plans have been thoroughly ruined.”

“What then?” Walys asked, too soul-weary now to rise to the bait even if he believed it worth the effort. “Am I to be tortured?”

“Torture? As if that’s at all likely to earn me reliable information,” Rickard scoffed. “Assuming you wouldn’t feed me falsehoods as a way to get one last lick in. You must truly think poorly of me.”

“And why not?” Walys bit out, not even having to fake his scathing manner at this point. “You only just finished praising ancestral arrogance as a way to denigrate the best of the realm’s kings and queens in the pursuit of war.”

“And here we are. First you try reasoned argument. If that doesn’t work, you make an appeal to authority, either yours or that of someone else only you’ve ever heard of. Or an appeal to emotion I suppose, when it’s Lyarra you’re talking to. If that also fails, you engineer a situation where you destroy whatever confidence I might have gained after that small victory and then make me acknowledge you as the highest authority on the topic again. Gaslight me, as my son would say. And now, it seems, I’ve found the pit you’ll sink into when even that’s denied to you. You actually did it. You went and attacked me personally.”

Whatever uncertainty Maester Walys still felt was suddenly and thoroughly swept away by the utter _certainty_ that he was not leaving that room alive.

Somehow, that only loosened his tongue instead of locking it in the steel trap that was his mind. “You’d really do it, won’t you? You would have war.”

“No I would not, have you not listened to a word I said? I just spent the past Gods knows how long explaining the ins and outs of why the _Targaryens_ will. If the sane ones did all this to us, what do you think a mad one will do?”

“Oh what certainty upon those in distant thrones and castles! So certain are you, when you only met the current king the once.”

“A Targaryen is a Targaryen, a pattern is a pattern, and King Aerys was already mad when he summoned me into his presence during my visit to King’s Landing all those years ago.”

Maester Walys outright glared at the lord before him. “What do you even know of madness?

“Everything I saw on that one trip to King’s Landing of years ago. Everything that’s reached my ears since them. There is no ambition Aerys carries, other than maybe conquering the Stepstones, that wouldn’t be better termed a delusion. Building a whole new city because King's Landing smells. Building a war fleet to conquer Braavos because the Iron Bank was mean to him. Building an underwater canal to turn Dorne into a land of green plains, somehow. Gods, just my brief visit was enough to make him fantasise about building a second Wall hundreds of miles even further up North. Even _with_ winterstone we’d never be able to manage it, and we didn’t even have it at the time.”

“Is this is your game then? You would have a conspiracy and alliance between the Baratheons, Arryn and the Starks. Then you’d go to war for future ‘maybes’ confected out of your own assumptions of some great travesties that may or may not come in the future?”

“I’m playing nothing,” Rickard said coldly. “Up here we don’t play that game of thrones you southrons like so much, and for good reason. And there’s no maybe about it. Aerys was young, ambitious and optimistic. But that was ten years ago. Ten years of all his optimism, ambitions and dreams being blocked, circumvented and ruined by his Hand, the Small Council and every other force of self-interest and sanity at the capital. All that disappointment, circumvention and resistance to all his wishes will have festered into resentment and paranoia by now. Ten years to grow bitter. Ten years to _stew_. Ten years for his oh so endearing crazy dreams to choke and rot into self-destructive wants and desires. I would be mad _not_ to take precautions. No Targaryen King has ever failed to paint the realm in blood when they finally destroyed themselves. I can only hope nothing like Summerhall happens again, because Gods save us if he truly becomes unhinged.”

“Oh what great foresight I see before me!” Walys scoffed, the certainty of his demise giving him strength in his last hour. “You mean to have the Arryns, Stark and Baratheon combine their power, and you’d waste it all on breaking things even more. Does it not occur to you what power such a block could attain in the capital? And what of the Tully's and Lannisters? Has it not occurred to you what opportunities lie on that front? If you but married one son to one of the Tully sisters, you could have young Jaime Lannister wed the other. You think the Great Lion would pass on such a chance to expand his power? Hells, with the right coaxing even _Dorne_ could be brought to the fold. There is literally _nothing_ such a force could not achieve. Trade agreements, tariff exemptions, tax reductions, new and greater honors, even the New Gift could simply be restored with but one stoke of Tywin Lannister’s quill. What war would need be had then?”

“And that’s where you and I differ, maester. You think an alliance of the Great Houses of Westeros could control House Targaryen, whereas I am not deluded enough to think _anything_ can control the mad.”

Walys Flowers glared at the lord before him, angry and affronted. Who was he to call him deluded when he spouted madness and treason and lust for war with every other word? “For someone who professes disgust for the games of southrons, you certainly seem ever so adept, my lord! How is it that I never saw the signs of this insanity when it has such a grip on you that you’d war against the realm entire for mere pride?”

“Oh please. Pride is the basis for all dignity. There is nothing _mere_ about it. And if pride is all you choose to jump on from all I’ve talked about this hour, we may as well end this right now.”

“Indeed!” the maester said sharply, throwing his head back and laughing almost madly himself. “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action, and over a dozen times is just being a cheeky little shit that needs to be put in his proper place, is that right? Never mind how much the North has prospered since the accession of House Targaryen. Never mind that the Iron Throne has to this day gotten more out of the _Dornish_ than it did the North. And Dorne wasn’t even part of the kingdoms for near two centuries!”

“That’s entirely owed to Torrhen’s negotiations and the steadfast obstinacy of my forebears and the North since then,” Rickard said flatly, as if he didn’t realize nor care that he was essentially incriminating himself and his forefathers. “Aegon the Unlikely aside, why do you think the Targaryens never miss an opportunity to spite us? It’s because Torrhen promised to abide to the _letter_ , and the letter of our vows is that to _Dragonstone_ we pledged our force of arms and hearth and _harvest_. Nothing else. Bitter and defeated by his own children as he was, Torrhen was not so broken as to walk back on any of that. He did accede in the end to pay taxes like everyone else, but only because the rest of the kingdoms would have banded against us for such a major concession even without Aegon’s dragons breathing down their necks.”

Damn well they should, Walys thought spitefully.

“But that doesn’t mean we didn’t use that leverage to force a compromise on everything else. Why do you think the Iron Throne never openly moved against us every time we ignored the Blackfyres? Our oaths are to Dragonstone, not the Iron Throne. So long as the Targaryens hold it, we are sworn to them, but the Blackfyres are all _legitimate_ members of House Targaryen with an equal claim to the island. That aside, why do you think tarrifs on Essossi food imports and other trade with them are so high that the Manderlys can’t afford a war fleet? I can assure you that ‘promoting internal production and trade’ isn’t even half of it, no matter how happy it makes the Reach. The Velaryons too, since it’s stymied House Baratheon’s ability to build a fleet of their own. Shipbreaker Bay is one thing, but Tarth could easily handle it, and in fact did so often in the past. Dragonstone is the only territory with a royal exemption from those particular tarrifs and taxes, being the royal homeland and all. And all of that pales, of course, next to that little bit where Jaehaerys and his bitch queen literally crippled out food source in perpetuity.”

Maester Walys stared at Lord Rickard of House Stark, struck almost speechless by the sheer shamelessness on display. Almost. Barely. “You would wage war because you think you should only pay taxes on food. The North. On _food_.”

“Oh come now, I hope you don’t expect me to buy into this fake outrage. Especially when the point is precisely the opposite of what you’re making light of. Food is the least of what the North has to offer, but also the one thing that the North can’t spare. Or did you think it mere whim that we’ve started importing food from the South when we didn’t need to before?”

“Unbelievable,” Walys said, unwilling to engage in that pointless line of discussion. Incapable and unwilling to obfuscate the disbelief and aversion he suddenly felt towards the man before him. “You actually admit it. It really is all for your damned pride after all!”

“Ah yes,” Rickard Stark said just as disdainfully. “How ill done of us to _not_ lightly become the sycophantic dogs of a lunatic blessed with a weapon the size of his ego but not a tenth of the ability or claim that should have followed. But the answer is still no.”

Maester Walys stared at the madman before him, almost incapable of forcing down his reaction to that blatant provocation. Wondered what made it so that man could sit there and look so grim and undaunted while he spewed so much vitriol. Wondered if he was going mad himself. Or if it really was more than coincidence that he couldn’t think back to any sign of all this insanity. Especially none that dated to before the man began to wear those metal rings in his beard. “This is why you killed the Boltons, isn’t it?” Walys realized suddenly.

“Not at all. That really was just our ancestral feud paying off. Not that I’m not pleased to have that particular canker on the North’s nose ripped out.”

“It won’t end so cleanly, I hope you realize.”

“It wouldn’t shock me to learn the Boltons sent someone to the Second Sons or wherever else at some point,” the man dismissed with a shrug. “But they’ll find out long after I’ve dealt with the matter. And their claim would be flimsy even if I didn’t have just cause to attain their whole line now that I know what oathbreakers they are. Flaying under our noses for all this time, honestly. But what can you expect from betrayers who tried to sell us out to the Andal invaders and wore our skin as cloaks on and off over millennia before then?”

The maester wondered if it would even help poking at _that_ atrociously outdated grievance at this point. Walys decided there wasn’t any point to even attempt discretion in changing the topic. The maester forced his mind away from that pathway. He still had one more point to make. One of many, even if he wasn’t so deluded to think he’d be allowed to voice all of them. “You can’t win that war. You don’t have the men.”

“Yes we do.”

“No. Not for an offensive war.”

“Not yet. Not without the alliances, which you’ve been the strongest advocate for, if you’ll recall.”

“You don’t have any ships. Hells, you haven’t had any naval power worth mentioning for thousands of years. How will you even move your troops anywhere? How does that dovetail with all these secret plans? Think you to bribe Dirftmark perhaps? Or go begging for scraps from those Ironborn nuisances? Ha! Or perhaps you mean to squeeze through the Neck and camp in front of the Twins until the Freys take pity on you and finally demand their toll?”

Rickard Stark pinched his nose and groaned. Groaned! “Good Gods!” The noble looked at him and spoke slowly then. As if he were Archmaester Walgrave in one of those too frequent cases when Walys said something so preposterous that he spent the rest of the days feeling like a dunce. “Maester, do tell me. Please. After Bran the Burner destroyed his father’s ships and shipyards, what’s the next thing that happened?”

Walys Flowers stared at the man, uncomprehending. Then he did comprehend and experienced the abrupt impulse to jump out the window from shame. “The Worthless War...”

“The Worthless War. The War Across the Water. _A thousand years of maritime warfare_. How the hell does everyone keep thinking we never rebuilt our naval power? I guess it’s true what my father said, some things are just so stupid that only intellectuals can believe them.”

The insult did not wash over him like others had in the past between them, for the simple fact that it was completely accurate and deserved this time. Especially with how much time had passed between now and the time of the Shipwright...

Not that Walys was ready to believe the man on anything now, let alone something so grand. That the North rebuilt its fleet at some point didn’t mean it hadn’t also been lost again, somehow. Wasn’t it the North who conceded the Worthless War in the end? There had to be a reason for it. There was no way to hide even a middling fleet without it scuttling or rotting away either. If the North had naval assets worth more than the hot air being spewed in his face right now, someone would have long since found out.

But that line of talk was even more doomed than the last one. “No…” Walys eventually said instead, trying to sound more certain than he felt. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe any of it. Nor do I think your motives are as pure as you claim. You’re just out to finish what Torrhen started. That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it?”

“Actually, I’ve been entirely honest. If I don’t want something known, I just stay quiet. I thought you knew that by now.”

He’d thought he did, but the man had shared all that with a supposed enemy far too freely. More importantly, this wasn’t the first time Walys’s entire system of beliefs had come crashing down around him over the course of just one conversation.

“Incidentally, if there _were_ some ancestor or other whose contributions to the North I’d want to emulate, it wouldn’t be Torrhen but Cregan.”

Walys couldn’t help but look at the man in complete disbelief. “Cregan Stark was a short-sighted opportunist. His only contribution to history was trying to smash the hardest-won and most fragile peace in the history of Westeros, because he was angry at always being late to everything.”

“Quite so,” Rickard Stark agreed, shocking him. “Or at least that’s one way to look at him. He didn’t seem too concerned with what history would say about him, seeing as he didn’t leave much written in his own hand despite living so long. But if he really was just that, he’s also the king of unintended consequences. Cregan could easily have seceded during the Dance or after. But I assume Jacaerys got the benefit of the doubt for being Velaryon instead of Targaryen, and bringing the blood of dragonlords into the Stark line was certainly a prize worth fighting for. I doubt it surprised Cregan when the Targaryens reneged on the Pact of Ice and Fire, but he _did_ get to execute enough southron high lords that the Andal kingdoms were embroiled in inheritance strife. So much that they were unable to threaten the North or properly rise in favour of a Targaryen suppression force for an entire generation. We were spared all the audits from the royal taxman for a while there too, thank the Gods. That always turns into an embarrassment.”

“Of course it does,” Walys said darkly. “What else could happen when the North can find fault even in the most fundamental of sworn duty?”

“You misunderstand: it turns into an embarrassment for them, not us. Whenever the office of the Master of Coin questions how little coin we send, we invite them to come take their share from the source. On the rare occasions where they take us up on it, our contribution numbers are confirmed every time. Because we have them accompanied by loyal men and the most cutthroat of our own taxmen we can find. It goes a long way to keep the local taxman on the little man’s side when he’s paid to _prevent_ the king’s taxman from demanding too much. The loyalty of our smallfolk grows considerably in the doing, I’ll tell you that much. Smallfolk loving the taxman, honestly. Only House Targaryen could ever be mad enough to make that come to pass.”

That… That… Maester Walys had no idea what to say to that.

Lord Rickard looked thoughtfully out the window. The eerily quiet window from whose sill the lone remnant of the raven conspiracy had been watching Walys all that time. “It baffles me to this day that Cregan didn’t secure Northern independence during his brief time as Hand.”

Perhaps Jacaerys had been shrewd enough to insist on a wording that forbid him that loophole, Walys thought but didn’t say. He was certain that it would not go down well.

“Perhaps Jacaerys had been shrewd enough to insist on a wording that forbid him that loophole,” Walys jerked in his chair, shocked. Had he misjudged him so utterly? Could they both be thinking so much alike? Or could the man read minds now also? “But Cregan also left behind the bulk of his whole army. Over ten thousand young, faithful and adventurous lads that put down roots and married and multiplied until they became our biggest and most prolific source of information. For so long they continued to pine after and keep in touch with their northern families, which they occasionally renewed blood ties with via marriage. Letters continue to travel by coach and rider between North and South to this day, even if not as many as generations ago. They send supplies to their kin too, sometimes. Incidentally, their many, strong, well-fed and restless descendants should now be anxiously seeking prospects. Even if half of them converted to the Seven, the other half should be jaded enough with pushy septons to jump at any promise of honest work and opportunity I may or may not send word of in the near future.”

Walys Flowers stared at Rickard Stark, numb with surprise and annoyance and incredulity. He was ready to go on an entire diatribe about rose-tinted glasses and baseless assumptions and the shame in using such cheap ways of romanticizing one’s ancestors. But the impulse was smothered by the surprise at Rickard Stark not pouncing harder on the issue of the Pact of Ice and Fire. After the character assassination he’d committed against Good Queen Alysanne, he’d have expected the man to condemn the Targaryen line here as well. From his perspective, House Stark saved the Targaryens in their darkest hour and were never rewarded for that. It could easily be spun into a major insult, promising a Targaryen princess to Cregan's heir in the Dance and never following up on it, even when Cregan saved house Targaryen after Aegon II's death. That was not even counting the surplus of princesses that House Targaryen had of age with Cregan’s son. Baela and Rhaena came to mind, Daemon's daughters both of them. And then Aegon III's daughters, Daena, Rhaena and Elaena. The first two could have married his heir Rickon, and the latter three could have married Jonnel, when his brother died in service of Daeron in Dorne.

Never mind that it wasn’t Targaryen but a Velaryon pledge that broke and failed!

“Even a hundred years later the Old Man of the North still vexes us, but with that track record I can’t really hold it against him too much,” the other man mused, seemingly oblivious to his maester’s open scorn as he traced the ripples in the dragonsteel with a fingertip. Dragonsteel for the old wolf’s most prized heirloom. Oh the irony! “I doubt I’ll ever know if Cregan was a strategic mastermind or just an ambitious opportunist with the most absurd luck in the world. But maybe luck isn’t the right word for it. Things _did_ just tumble forward on the same tracks and currents we’ve travelled all the millennia before. As far as unintended consequences go, they’re pretty up there, wouldn’t you say maester?”

“… My Lord…“ But Walys trailed off. Even that little courtesy made him taste ash.

“I never believed it before no matter how my father tried to explain it,” Rickard Stark suddenly broke the stalemate, conveying a strange sort of satisfaction without actually showing it, somehow. “But this really does seem to be what happens when you’re not entirely shit at keeping your moral code – the unintended consequences of your actions can actually be good ones. I hope I’ll do a better job teaching that lesson to my children than I did learning it.”

The silence fell and weighed over them and stretched over seconds and minutes and it was not kind or easy at all.

“I’ll have to teach Brandon a lot of things he still doesn’t know, it seems,” Lord Stark finally resumed watching Walys again. “My son sat on this issue _far_ too long. I could have settled it one way or another ten moons ago. It’s quite telling he didn’t question why guest right even applies here as well. It occurs to me that he might not even know what a maester’s position and vows actually are. Not that it will be relevant for much longer. I believe I now know how to properly handle the appointment of maesters. And what guidance to provide on the matter to my bannermen of course.” Rickard Stark treated his maester to a gaze that he didn’t know how else to describe besides painstaking. “Mayhap I should see to it that the North stops shirking from magic as well. We clearly lack all other means to navigate this darkness you’ve been pushing me down at every turn.”

Maester Walys Flowers didn’t understand. Then he did and promptly gaped at Rickard Stark in open-mouthed horror.

“Congratulations maester, you’ve done what you always meant to do,” said the Head of House Stark and Warden of the North. “You’ve changed the North more than any other Andal before you. Tell me, is this not a worthy achievement?”

Walys did not reply. He was too stunned.

“Get out of my sight.”

“… What?”

“Leave.”

“Y-you…” His tongue felt heavy in his mouth and his throat scratched against itself as he stumbled over his own words. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Oh Walys,” Rickard Stark said sadly. “I don’t need to do anything more. Do I?”

Those last two words said so softly haunted his steps as he left the room in a daze. All that certainty and uncertainty and certainty again, all of them had been brushed aside as if they didn’t matter. As if none of it matter. As if he didn’t matter. He felt… he didn’t know how he felt. His feet carried him forward but all sense and reason seemed like they lagged behind him no matter how many hallways and bridges and stairs and steps he walked and paced. Even when his robes flapped with every draft and his chain clinked every time he made a turn and didn’t, the world around just didn’t seem real.

The stone-faced guards posted outside the Library Tower were the first hint that something was wrong. Their fellows guarding the stairs to the living quarters were the second hint about what else he hadn’t known was wrong, when he made to save time on the walk to his tower and they denied him access for the first time ever. When he tried to stop a passing servant, the girl just looked down and hurried on without giving response. When he called after her, then tried to physically stop the next one he crossed paths with, he stumbled to a halt at the loud _prruk-prruk-prruk_ of a raven’s call. Spinning around with his heart in his throat, he found Alban staring at him from an old beam up above.

The maester all but fled from the sight as fast as his walk could take him, in a vain effort to outrun the anger and grief of that theft and complete betrayal. But even as he pounded down the length of the suspended bridge between the Great Keep and the Maester’s Tower, he stopped at the mid-point window to look outside. He saw twice the number of on-duty guards everywhere he looked. Then he finally entered his tower proper, only to be faced with the terrible discovery that it wasn’t his tower anymore. There were fresh grooves in the flooring everywhere he looked as if something or somethings had been dragged about. The doors to all quarters but his own were locked. The stairwells to the rookery and the observatory were blocked by silent sentries that stared at him accusingly. And his rooms…

They were all but empty. The place had been stripped clean. Ransacked top to bottom of everything of worth. The bookcases were empty, the desk was bare inside and out, scraps of paper littered the floor now bare of every last rug and carpet. His sleeping area had been stripped clean of blankets, feathers and even the straw. Not even his personal effects were to be found anywhere, few and meagre as those mementos were. A chip of his acolyte dorm wall, his copy of _A Caution for Young Girls_ by Coryanne Wylde, even his father’s old archmaester rod. Gone. All gone. The only thing that stood out was a small vial sat in the middle of the desk. Sweetsleep. It lay there like the most innocent thing, a clean and clear monument to all his sins. Glinted tauntingly in the pale light of the winter afternoon reflected off the snow.

Rickard Stark had never been playing any games with him. It was a lot simpler. He was stalling until the guards could ransack his chambers and all his hiding places.

Walys didn’t know how long he stared at the thing. He knew even less how he managed to stumble away from the thing, or how he wound up staring out the window for even longer afterwards. The world was a painting of still whiteness and moving men, twigs, branches and ravens playing on the sharp, sloped roof of the great hall in front of him. The dark birds were using the snow-covered roof as a slide. Others were rolling down snowy mounds down in the yard and stables, playing keep-away with each other and the dogs. Half the rookery seemed spread all over Winterfell, having the grandest time as if to spite him whose life had taken a turn for everything but. There were even a bunch of the birds making toys out of sticks and stones and pinecones. They played with them like happy children, hopping and bouncing and cawing all over the canopy of the firewood supply next to the Great Hall. He wondered how long it would take before one of them broke off from the mob through whatever sorcery. Come over and taunt or mock him and complete the picture.

He saw little Ned and Lyanna and Benjen throwing snowballs too, after a while. He wondered if they knew anything. He wondered if anyone would try to save them and the North after he was gone.

The shadows were much longer when he finally turned away from the window. He walked back to the desk on stiff legs. He stood there for a while, staring at the bottle that could only have come from the stash he kept in the rookery which was beyond his reach now.

Then he took and threw it at the wall with a scream of anguish and it shattered.

“The one who passes the sentence must swing the sword, is that it?” Walys asked harshly, looking up at his white raven that wasn’t his any longer now. “You don’t have to swing the sword if you’re not the one passing the sentence, is that it?” What a way for Rickard Stark to tell him what he thought should have been his answer, all those years ago when _he_ counselled for murder.

He didn’t even have any way to gainsay the logic, Walys thought bitterly.

He left the tower with grim purpose. If Rickard Stark wanted so badly to see him shunned and disdained and humiliated in his great halls of power, far be it from him to gainsay his decision. The kitchens would probably be closed to him, as would the armory and tool sheds and everyone’s goodwill. None of it would matter. There were always at least three knives misplaced in obvious places, and while he could have used a proper mortar and pestle cup, a wooden mug and broken broom handle and one of the many dog bowls would suffice. The only thing that made him think twice was the shovel, but that solved itself when an errand boy saw him and dropped the one he was carrying in his rush not to be seen anywhere near him. One would have thought Walys was some leper, except the boy proved every bit as foolhardy as every other peasant in the world by stopping to watch him from around the nearest corner.

Were he a lesser man, Walys might have considered taking him hostage just to satisfy what little he could of his bubbling spite.

Instead, he beat down any attempts by his mind to conjure similarities with the not-child this was all about, picked up the shovel and made for the Godswood. He was stopped by guards there too, of course. But they didn’t leave their posts to escort him off. And when one of the pair was about to break their silent staredown to go looking for a superior, the white raven flew and cawed above them, making them look up and spot the Lord himself. He was stood on the balcony of the Great Keep itself, looking down on them from his great place on high. After a while, he nodded shortly to the guards to let him go about his business. Walys didn’t bother feeling vindicated over having his expectations met.

“Your plans will fail you know,” Walys said once the shade of the trees engulfed him, not needing to look up in the boughs to know his raven was there watching. Listening to everything he said. “You should have started teaching all your children these things as soon as they became old enough to be able to keep a secret. Surely Brandon and Ned have reached that point? And is there a backup plan so that your secret designs aren’t lost in case you and your heir are killed? There must always be someone to clean up the mess, no? That is what lordship is. That is what _kingship_ is.”

He made his way through the trees rightward instead of forward where the Heart tree stood. Didn’t stop until he came upon the three hot pools that fed Winterfell’s pipe system. As always, even in winter, the place was bountiful in all the shrubs and moss and mushrooms not of the edible kind. Or at least, not edible as most people understood them.

“When Arryn and Baratheon find out what you’re using them for, how will they respond? For all the value you place in being underestimated, you don’t prove very good at conveying when you want that to cease. When Lord Ellard Stark supported the claim of Laenor Velaryon over Viserys Targaryen during the Great Council of 101 AC, was it because you actually hoped he would win? Or was it a warning? How does the Iron Throne remember it these days, I wonder?”

He gathered what he needed, prepared them in the right ways, mixed them in the right order and mashed everything together in fits and starts with an ounce of water until the paste was soft and even. Then he set the bowl down and went off to look for a place to dig that wasn’t frozen solid.

“Even if Arryn and Baratheon or whoever else you pull into your scheme doesn’t hold your secret agenda against you, why would they help? Why should they throw their lot in with you when you frame your hate of the Iron Throne in the same hate you feel for the entirety of the Andal kingdoms? The Iron Throne is supposed to protect and preserve the good of _all_ the realm. Even if they agree you seem exempt, why should they care? You’ve given them no reason not to view the North as an empty land with no prospects and you as heathen barbarians. Blame it on septons if you wish, it’s not all because our Gods are different.”

The last ingredient was further near the forest’s midpoint, well away from the hot springs proper, but persistence paid off where memory didn’t. The sun disappeared from the sky and his limbs protested by the time he was done digging, but angry perseverance was on his side and soon enough even the weirwood roots were in his hands.

He ignored the voice of Archmaester Norren who’d so often japed about this or that Andal revisionist that most recently took his turn shitting all over the First Men in their history books. Walys had thought it an ill vice once, a means for malcontents to force through the idea that Andal supremacy was nothing short of inevitable. Now that he’d seen the depth of misplaced and undeserved Northern pride for himself, he found himself far less outraged on the native’s behalf.

“I wonder, is it truly obligation that drives you, or is it your own wounded pride? When you visited the capital, how much did they mock you I wonder? Did the Iron Throne’s Small Council jape behind your back? Did they jape to your face even, when you were down there? For relying on the Riverlands and Reach for food in winter, mayhap? How hard was it to hold your tongue about Jaehaerys and his Good Queen wife that heaped the New Gift insult on you all? Truly, such grand benefits you receive from being part of the Seven Kingdoms! At least before the conquest there was always a goodly stream of conscripts for the Wall thanks to all the warring down there, wasn’t that what you said?”

Why should he shy away from saying his piece, now when he could do so without interruption or rebuke?

He was shivering by the time he made it back to the hot springs, his grey robe not enough to keep him warm despite the clothing underneath. He thought of taking a dip in the pools themselves for a while, then his mind conjured an image of the raven plunging beak-first through his eye socket and him floating off dead in the middle of the pool.

“You only invite woe if you think Cregan’s leftover northmen can be turned to your benefit now,” Walys told his foul watcher once he decided not to push his luck. “You would spread word of lofty Northern opportunities to pull all those legions of increasingly disenfranchised peasants in numbers greater than what Cregan left behind a dozen times over. Oh, what a great feat by the Old Man of the North six decades dead! Whatever news the Winds of Winter carry from far off places, they are not the only winds, or even foremost among them. The northmen left behind will have married and established families and bloodlines in the south. Put down roots, just as you said. You think there is no strife of faith in every household? You think inviting them North won’t invite all those tensions you disdain as well? You think the Seven won’t come along with them? For all the contempt you hold for southron snobbery and the Faith of the Seven, that’s exactly who you mean to bring in. Westeros is at the edge of a precipice. The scales are frail, ripe for the right word to tilt and shatter them every which way no matter the wish of one person. Bring them up and it’s the southron kingdoms that the rumor mill will serve. You might even spark an uprising of the Faith. The Faith Militant, didn’t you yourself say they lie in wait? To say nothing of the tensions that could erupt among the nobles whose smallfolk you’ll be poaching. Rile them and they won’t stop until you all drown in their spite.”

“Spite! Spite! Spite!” Alban cawed from the snowy branches behind him.

“Is that your way of telling me _I’m_ drowning in spite?”

He was talking to animals now, Walys thought as he used his purloined knife to scrape the insides of the root bark into the mug full of hot water. Then again, he’d been doing that for years now. Oh Alban. He couldn’t bear to think about his fate. He couldn’t bear to think of suffering the same. He would _not_ suffer the same, even if it killed him. He’d take his own life before that happened.

But he’ll do it on his own terms.

Finally, the paste was ready. It wasn’t the distilled potion he made before, the one that gave him his most precious and doomed spark of insight, but quantity would just have to substitute for quality in this case.

Picking it up, he walked to stand between the three pools to soak in the warmth one last time.

Then he turned around and made his way to the Heart Tree at the Godswood’s core. He could already feel the cold seep into his bones. He knew it would take him long before the paste’s effects wore off. Or would have, if he hadn’t deliberately made ten times as much as it was safe to take. He stood there, fantasising of chopping the thing down, burning it to ciders and then dancing over the ashes and remains.

Instead, he walked to stand in front of it, knelt down and began to eat the mixture one handful at a time.

“Whatever else may be, the southron wife you buy an alliance through will do the one thing the Andals never managed, you realise,” Walys said between bites, because of spite he had plenty to spare of his own even now. “You’re a fool if you think a Lord of a Great House won’t demand you let his precious spawn bring the Faith here with her.”

Wouldn’t that be ironic? Thousands of years of defiance undone for the price of a maidenhead, assuming the woman will even have it by the time she’s wed.

Too bad he wouldn’t be alive to see it. He'd have to settle for spitting the tree demons in the eye.

Walys’ mind stalled. The Godswood teetered suddenly as if weighed down by the weight of the world. The blood-leafed tree’s two eyes seemed to mist over with white fog. The moon rose high into the sky. Its scattered beams pierced the flame-red heavens and cast forth as shadows disappeared from amidst the branches. The fading footprints of a warrior slain lingered in the snow reflected in the pool of black water. Then, suddenly, that hated sight of a black abyss surrounded by a thousand and one eyes of fire noticed him from where it wallowed in Winterfell’s most auspicious bowels. Then it shimmered into the shape of a boy wearing his sight as part of a cloak made of crow feathers. They blinked at him.

Above all else, the sight brought one last question to his mind.

If she had time to learn to read before it was all done, how many years _did_ her wetnurse and mother breastfeed the Good Queen Alysanne?

“-. .-“

_To the Seneschal of the Citadel,_

_I’d hoped that the last one was a fluke, what with how he managed to get himself killed along with the entirety of my family and half of Winterfell’s staff because he couldn’t handle one epidemic. But now I find this new maester you sent me dead of exposure after spending the whole night doped up on some poison or drug in the snow._

_Since your leadership is clearly as incompetent as the poor excuses for learned men you’ve been sending me, I’m coming down there to choose my help myself._

_Rickard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North._

“-. .-“

_To Leyton Hightower, Lord of the Hightower, Lord of Oldtown, Voice of Oldtown, Defender of the Citadel, Defender of Oldtown, Lord of the Port and Beacon of the South,_

_Greetings from the North._

_If you are reading this letter, then my special raven got this message to you without ever passing through the hands of any maester of the Citadel._

_When my father and mother and the rest of my family and half of Winterfell died when I was six and ten, I had no reason to suspect my maester of any wrongdoing because he’d also died to the sickness. But now I find out my new maester has been conspiring with others at the Citadel in pursuit of aims and objectives unknown. Circumstances prevented me from uncovering the what, who or why. But they did_ not _prevent me from learning that, whatever their goals may be, they hinged among other things on_ murdering my wife and firstborn _. The plot against my heir has been prevented, but my wife’s life now hangs in the balance. Worse, I never got the chance to squeeze my maester for information. The treacherous fiend was found dead by his own hand the very next day after I got word from the_ Dreadfort’s _maester that House Bolton has gone extinct under obscenely suspicious circumstances._

_Attached is a copy of the letter I sent to the Citadel, as well as a summary of the evidence House Stark is currently in possession of, to be gone over in more detail in a moon or so during my visit of your fine city._

_I’ve given similar warning to all the other Great Houses I could reach without risking their maesters learning of this first. However, as a gesture of courtesy, as well as my confidence that House Hightower could surely_ not _be involved in any plots so foul, I leave it to you to decide how to handle this matter relative to the Iron Throne. As, indeed, I urged our peers to do as well._

_Good luck in your hunt, for all our sakes,_

_Rickard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North._

“-. .-“


	17. All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (I)

“-. 273 AC .-“

Once upon a time, an old man went hunting for cold in the mountains. It was slow and painful and a relief as he walked, staggered, stumbled, crawled and lay down in the snow. As he died, he was glad he’d made it far enough that his little ones wouldn’t stumble over his corpse. And when his breath shuddered its last gasp, the old man’s last thought was to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t have gone quite so far afield. Was there even a godface near enough to take him on?

There wasn’t. He’d go the same way as every other hunter and fighter and fisherman and peasant that died out of gods’ sight. Whatever it was. He didn’t want to find out. He was about to find out.

Then he didn’t.

Death came down from above, knelt at his side and overlayed him entire, somehow. It spoke for a lifetime between one moment and the next. Of sense and reason and knowledge dreamed into the world from beyond the stars and everything the man did throughout his life that meant something. It was enough to enlighten even the poorest slave that never saw the sun, but none of it found any point of purchase. He was a simple man who led his life as well as he could and just wanted to go meet his gods.

He’d often imagined that death would be disappointing, not disappointed.

But death saw the man’s wish fulfilled all the same. Picked him up off the ground and strode off amidst tree and stone and stream. There was no second thought for the flesh and bone and frozen blood left behind. Not from death, nor from the man himself as he rested content in its right hand like an iridescent egg made of every hue known to man and beast and everything in between. Death didn’t go down the man’s path, though. Instead, it made its way to the edge of the woods before taking flight once more. Soared over the distant lands like a bird until it descended again. Landed in front of the ancient face that had beheld for thousands of years unbroken the place where winter fell.

With the snow-white trunk of the weirwood behind it, he could finally see it now. Death. What it looked like. An unlined outline cut into the shape of a boy wearing a hooded cloak made of one and one thousand eyes borne each by crow feathers. They blazed with blue and white fire and enfolded him entirely like a panoply of interlocking runes that gazed and blinked every which way. They saw everything and acknowledged everything. From the fever that strangled the neck of warlords all the way to the top most edge of the world. From the cool and curious western ocean to the eastern red dawn which they looked away and past with a contempt wilfully blind.

Death gave the soul to the tree. The mouth swallowed it. The right eye glowed and wept its price right back. It looked like another soul, except smaller and paler and lacking any shades of colour at all besides the blueish green of sea water. Or perhaps the pines of silver fir.

Death flew again then, up and southwards all the way to the end of the marshes. There it seemed to stop, except it didn’t. It seemed to stretch forward, eyes and flame and smokemist and itself unspooling like a spiral the further south it went. It flew and spun and drew a path between sunbeams, dodging the usurpation that fell upon the land like blood-red sunrays from the east. Thinner and thinner it grew, all save for the blue-green bead of light inside death’s grasp. Thinner and thinner it grew the further it extended beyond the neck of the world where even the highest mysteries had fallen fallow. Then it swooped past the tallest tower into the not so tallest tower and a very familiar room where an even more familiar figure paced back and forth. A figure that was worried and stressed and undecided and angry. A figure that death ignored in favour of alighting next to the obsidian rod near the wall.

Death fed the not-soul to the glass candle. The newest claim disclaimed all prior claims. The candle came alight. The squat man spun to face it, astounded and then appalled when he saw past death to where he lay gazing from the other side. A distant roar sounded from the other side of the world as if screamed by an angry dragon. Then a one-eyed raven plunged through window and flame into his face screaming Luwin, Luwin, Lu-

“-win, Luwin, LUWIN!”

Luwin flinched awake to find himself starving and parched and being shaken by the shoulder where he lay on the ground in near total darkness. The guttural, grunting voice forced reality onto him like nothing else did. The light of the glass candle winked out between blinks. Even so the dark didn’t return. Not entirely. There was light coming from behind now, as if the door-

“Luwin, lad, are you with me? Say something, damn you!”

“M…Ma-“

“No, stop. Stop, lad. Never mind.” A pair of enormous arms hoisted him off the from under his knees and shoulders before his surroundings started to stomp past him with astounding swiftness, to the tune of a positively debauched cursing streak. Not for the first time, Luwin felt vindicated in shunning the Trade Talk and all its breeding grounds. Or he would have, if he had the strength left for what few wits it would have taken to do even that much. As it was, he didn’t have enough to spare even for the life-upending experience he’d just been carried out of. He felt weak, his heart beat ahead of his body, his breath was shallow, his eyes struggled to adjust to the light, and then his head started pounding from the rattling pace on top of everything else.

By the time they finally reached whatever destination he didn’t have eyes to look and guess at, his savior’s diatribe had crossed over into every language known to man and finally settled into a veritable deluge of the foulest cursing known to sailors. Even so, Luwin’s wits hadn’t recovered. What few he could spare ran in circles around the reality that his master in the higher mysteries had a very hard ale-belly. Almost as hard as his thick chest.

All of that was blown away by the feeling of the stair climb ending, the bed beneath him, and the replacement of his line of sight with a very familiar beetled brow. Then a cool glass of water pressed against his lips. He drank greedily.

“Slowly, slowly lad! You’ve been in there for – how many days _were_ you in there for? Oh who am I kidding, you never miss an appointment!” Archmaester Marwyn had always looked more a mastiff than a maester, but now he sounded just about ready to bite like one too. “I said go slow! … Alright. I’m going to feed you now. You’re in luck, I like my breakfast soft and quick, now say ah – don’t you make that face at me boy! Open up!”

Not willing to try his luck so soon after almost starving to death in the dark, Luwin did as ordered.

“Thank whatever gods aren’t too up their own arse, you’re not a lackwit yet.”

The porridge was warm and sweet with honey. The spoonfulls were big and generous. They didn’t miss their mark or dribble in a mess. Despite his ungraceful frame and murderous rage coming off in waves, the Master of Mysteries had very steady hands.

When he was done, Marwyn fed Luwin a second glass of water, then a third. He even let him hold it alone that time. His hands shook and he nearly dropped it, but he managed in the end. Marwyn then sat on the edge of the bed – Marwyn’s own bed, Luwin realized, in the bedroom he’d never been allowed in before – and went about checking his health.

“Tell me,” the archmaester demanded as his enormous right hand grabbed his face and pulled one eyelid low to check his sight while waving a finger before his eyes. “Who did this to you? Who put you in there? Who gave you that test without my input?”

In all honesty, Luwin had no idea what ‘this’ even was, really. He was just taking the traditional maester’s trial, like any other acolyte prepared to take his vows and become a maester. He was placed in a completely dark room with one of the Citadel's glass candles. He was supposed to stay in that room for the night in darkness, unless he managed to light the candle somehow. Which he apparently did? Or death did, or whatever that thing had been? Except not on the first night. Or even second or third. It was all supposed to be a lesson about truth and learning. Luwin hadn’t planned to take it for another year or two. But then he was told in no uncertain terms that only avowed maesters got access to the _full_ depth of the Citadel’s knowledge and he’d be wasted if he waffled anymore. So when Archmaesters Perestan, Norren and Ryam all urged him to take it within hours of each other-

“You don’t say,” Marwyn interrupted him with a cold glare. “Are you sure there wasn’t also a Vaellyn and Walgrave in there somewhere?” Luwin had to suddenly reassure himself that the enormous hand around his neck was just checking his blood flow instead of preparing to snap him like a twig. “I suppose you were also a good boy who obeyed your elders when told to pretend like I suddenly don’t exist. ‘Leave spells and prayers to priests and septons and bend your wits to learning truths a man can trust in’ or thereabouts, I’m sure. How close am I?”

Luwin gaped. That was what Maester Ryam had said almost word for word.

“Ah, but what else could you do?” Marwyn went on derisively as he used his Laennec tube to listen in on Luwin’s internal sounds. “After all, I’m not like other maesters. I keep the company of whores and hedge wizards, talk with hairy Ibbenese and pitch-black Summer Islanders in their own tongues, and sacrifice to queer gods at the little sailors' temples down by the wharves. Isn’t that what people say about me? They say a lot besides, that I often spend time in the undercity’s rat pits and black brothels, consorting with mummers, singers, sellswords, even beggars. Why, I even once killed a man with my fists! Well, let me set you straight now, my lad, all of that’s true.” Marwyn turned his head and spat a gob of red phlegm onto the floor. “Never mind that you knew all this already when you first came to me. Never mind that you believed it before but still wanted to learn what I had to teach you. Never mind all the lectures and private lessons _you_ yourself cajoled out of me despite all this. Never mind that I’d yet to rule one way or another your understanding of the higher mysteries.”

“… Maester, I’m sorry.”

“Bah! Oh Mirri, how you’ve spoiled me.” Marwyn reached into a pouch at his waist for more sourleaf to chew on. “I’m not angry at you, fool boy. You’re young and stupid and if I thought you wouldn’t break at the slightest breeze, I’d smack you over the head for it myself! But you haven’t had some great tragedy destroy your entire lifetime of beliefs. You can still grow learned _and_ wise without some big trauma rendering you unfit to advise anything smarter than the pigs. Or you could have, except that you just spent four days starving and almost dying of thirst in the dark. I can only hope it doesn’t leave lasting scars.”

Luwin dropped his head and watched blankly as the archmaester washed and bandaged the thick, bloody scrapes and scabs that had formed on his hands and knuckles after pounding on the doors for so long. For such large, rough-looking hands, they were impossibly gentle. Marwyn was no less careful in pinching and prodding his toes in case he’d broken them from kicking the same doors. He wondered if his last student ever suffered anything like this. Did this Mirri suffer some great tragedy, whoever she was? Wherever she might be now? Was that when his gruff and sharp-tongued teacher learned gentleness? Or had he always had it? It certainly felt like a skill honed over the course of a lifetime. Luwin himself had not one but three silver links of his own, but he didn’t think his hands were half as steady or tender as this. 

Finally, the Archmaester of Mysteries gathered his tools in their case and rose to carry the empty bowl to the dumbwench. He tossed the healer’s kit onto his desk as he passed it by, restoring that small bit of the room’s general state of disorderliness. The bedroom was in as much chaos as the rest of the man’s chamber, Luwin belatedly noted.

Watching him, Luwin couldn’t help but take in his appearance and wonder how his life had come to this point. Archmaester Marwyn had a head that was too big for his body, and the way it thrust forward from his shoulders, together with that slab of jaw, made him look as if he were about to tear off someone's head. Though short and squat, he was heavy in the chest and shoulders, with a round, rock-hard ale belly straining at the laces of the leather jerkin he wore in place of robes. Bristly white hair sprouted from his ears and nostrils. Luwin still hadn’t met anyone with bigger hands either, and he knew Hother Umber. If not for the chain of many metals that went around in more loops than actually fit above Marwyn’s jerkin around his bull's neck, one would easily think he were a dockside thug instead of a maester, let alone one of the foremost minds in the world.

When the dumbwench creaked down and away, there was no more avoiding the snark in the room. As if by unspoken agreement, both of them looked at the glass candle. It stood on the desk in the alcove to the right and behind the door. Luwin imagined it was put there so no one could peek in and spot it. Marwyn went out to his wider chambers to lock and bar the door, came back in and locked and barred this door too. Then he stomped over to the desk, sat in the chair in front of it and stared at the glass candle. Stared at it for a long time. Even now it burned where it stood, as if to mock every last of Luwin’s hopes that the thirst and starvation and everything else had been only a dream.

But he didn’t need magic to know that much, did he? All he had to do was look down at the dried piss on his robe. He wondered how rarely Marwyn used his own bed, if he didn’t make any noise about dumping on it something as soiled as himself. He wondered if anyone would be by to clean up the testing chamber. Would the future aspirants have the smell of his shit to gird themselves against when they took their turn? Besides whatever rubbish they were supposed to take with them from a lesson in complete and inescapable failure. Luwin didn’t voice any of those questions aloud though. Instead he laid quietly, wondering if he was only imagining the flickers of people and images in the blue-white flames.

It was almost noon when the glass candle winked out.

“Leave me with my bunghole puckered, why don’t you?” Marwyn grunted, getting up from his chair. He stood there a while longer, looking at the obsidian candle and its razor-sharp edges for a time. He shook himself soon after, though, and spat another gob of red phlegm on the floor. Then he turned to Luwin again, at last. “Do _not_ become like me, lad. Never allow yourself to reach the point where you can stare the miraculous in the face and only complain afterwards that it didn’t last long enough.”

Marwyn went to the door and began unlocking the bars and bolts.

“Wait! Are you going? Should I be going or-?”

“No. It’s too dangerous for you out there right now. Wouldn’t want you to lose your head for knowing the wrong people. Stay here and try not to break anything.”

Luwin stared at Marwyn, shocked. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”

Marwyn gave a ghastly sneer, the juice of the sourleaf running red between his teeth. Then he scoffed, grabbed his rod and put on his valyrian steel-wrought mask. “No one wanted to kill you. That bunch of holier-than-barth dotards wanted you chained and ready. They sought to prey on you like they’d been preyed on. Make you the same, self-deluded fool like the rest of their useless kind. Teach you to think like them instead of how to think for yourself. But then those ravens came that turned the Citadel upside down and they all just forgot about you.” Luwin had no idea what he was talking about. “They’ll be lucky if Hightower or Stark already got to them, because if I get my hands on them I’ll string them by their toes, cut them open while they’re still alive, sell their brains to the dumbest swindlers of Ragpicker’s Wynd and roast their balls and feed them to the rats! They can look down their nose all they want. They can pretend wisdom instead of ignorance all they want. They can badmouth me however they like. But clip my students’ wings? **No**.”

Luwin imagined that was all supposed to be reassuring, but all he could think about was that none of that denied or explained why he was at risk of being murdered _now_. What happened to rile the Hightower? Trees’ tears, just what did House Stark have to do with anything!?

Marwyn tossed him something and left him alone then. Locked him in behind four sets of locks. Left him to lie uselessly in bed with just the view out the window for company and his newest possession to turn over in his tired mind.

He stared at it. The thing in his hands now. A link in a chain. A link made of valyrian steel. He stared at it for hours.

Then he stared out the window too. Oldtown was the same labyrinth of wynds, crisscrossing alleys, narrow crookback streets, and markets, but the crowds... weren't. What few people were outside seemed skittish. Where they'd have walked was instead a veritable army of guards and soldiers wearing Hightower tabards. Which there always were, but not wearing their livery. That it was a message was obvious. What the message was, less so. The return message he could guess at even less. He just knew it had been out there for a while. There was a black spot among the forest of tabards with flaming towers. The Quill and Tankard. The island inn seemed to have been overtaken by grey and black and a small army of hounds almost overnight, scattered amidst direwolf banners he could actually distinguish if he squinted, so large they were. And beyond all men and buildings high and low, all the way to the docks that only this and few other chambers of the Citadel were high enough to see, a ship drew into port with sails bearing a merman banner.

On any other day, the fresh additions to the view wouldn't have bothered him. Oldtown was still a picture of snow-white roofs and slippery cobbles half-way frosted that hundreds of feet still tromped upon all the same. The winter sky was overcast, but the sunlight seeping through them like milk still reflected brightly off the snow. Further down the Honeywine and beyond the Starry Sept, The Hightower rose mighty and bright until its beacon almost touched the clouds. 

Somehow, though, the familiarity of the view didn’t manage to reassure him.


	18. All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (II)

## “-. 274 AC .-“

Archmaester Marwyn didn’t come back that day. Or that evening. Or that night. Luwin spent his first hours fretting, pacing and lying in bed by turns. Usually the latter. He could feel his strength returning after eating the Mage’s food and drinking his water, but there wasn’t much of that strength to go around. The stress of the isolation combined with Marwyn’s revelation that he was wanted dead by one or two great houses combined into a frantic, gnawing paranoia. It still wasn’t anywhere near the terrifying ordeal he’d just come out of though. Of spending a whole night and then three days and nights more in that absolute blackness only to slowly realise that no one was coming to let him out. Kicking at the door. Punching. Screaming himself hoarse. Sobbing helplessly in the darkness. He didn’t know what that said about him. What any of that said about him. Or anything else.

Desperate to get his mind off the terrifying void of information that prevented him from formulating even a vaguely reliable theory about what all had led him to this place, Luwin decided to explore the room he was in. Or, more precisely, rooms. It turned out there was a privy opposite the door from the archmaester’s desk, albeit one that barely smelled despite the small pool of piss and whatever else at the bottom that didn’t seem to drain. After relieving himself, he went to check the exit. The locks turned out to be strong and sturdy. Luwin wished Ryben was there to pick them for him, even if he knew it would cost him hours of listening to his latest deluge of prurient gossip.

The wall across the bed didn’t hold any secrets. But despite the scattered piles of clothing and shoes all over the place, it quickly became apparent that the chambers did have an adjacent closet as well. It had been turned into a small book room though, albeit one that seemed to have been emptied very recently. The blank spots amidst old dust were clear. All that remained on the bookshelves were a handful of blank tomes of Essosi paper, Lomas Longstirder’s _Wonders_ and _Wonders Made by Man_ \- very recently scribed copies by the looks of them – and two or three different copies each of several other works Luwin was familiar with. Maester Munkun's _The Dance of the Dragons,_ Grand Maester Kaeth’s _Lives of Four Kings_ , and _A True Telling_ of _Unnatural History_ by Septon Barth. There seemed to be older and new copies of each, their bindings marked green and black respectively, save for the last which also came in red. The ink didn’t seem to be as old as the bindings themselves though. Luwin wondered how deteriorated the old ones must have been for the archmaester to procure new ones without bothering to return them.

Having already read all of those titles and being more concerned with immediate matters, Luwin left the closet-turned-library. Back in the room next to the dumbwench was a surprisingly opulent vanity. Not so much in appearance – indeed, Marwyn seemed to favour practicality over design – but it held a surfeit of hair-cutting and shaving tools, as well as the clearest silvered mirror Luwin had ever laid eyes on, though one that seemed rather more prone to distorting reflections than normal. He wondered if Marwyn had anything specifically meant for trimming his vast nose hairs but managed to refrain from digging through the drawers. Barely.

The desk, however, was much more taxing on Luwin’s self-control. The glass candle seemed to pull at him where it stood, quiet and gleaming in the distant window light. It was tall and made of black obsidian twisted with sharp edges. Wary from having so recently had his mind played with, Luwin tried to distract himself with everything else on the desk. Some of the items were fairly ordinary – an inkwell, a pen, a jar of quills too for some reason, parchment and paper. Then there were the books. Others than the ones in the library closet. There was Colloquo Votar's _Jade Compendium_ , a thick volume of tales and legends from the east. The book appeared old but well cared for even by the standards of the Citadel. Under it was Maester Thomax's _Dragonkin, Being a History of House Targaryen from Exile to Apotheosis, with a Consideration of the Life and Death of Dragons_. He’d read it before, but this seemed a different beast than the scribed copy acolytes got access to, even those with more than one copper link like him. Opening it, he confirmed his expectations. The tome had beautifully rendered drawings and sketches, including one of Balerion the Black Dread done in colored inks. Under that book was an old and worn tome titled _Finis Coronat Opus – The End Crowns the Work_ by Gorghan of Old Ghis.

Finally, there was an unadorned and untitled tome which, on further inspection, proved to be a manuscript. A fairly new one too, with barely thirty pages written of what was clearly the first draft of a new writing. The script was more of a scrawl with a multitude of marks, scratches and even entire pages torn off in places. Turning back to the first page, however, told him everything and nothing he needed to know: _The Book of Lost Books_ by Archmaester Marwyn. Luwin put it back down with extra care.

Unfortunately, that left the glass candle as the only thing he hadn’t yet inspected. Archmaesters Perestan, Norren and Ryam probably intended for it to show that even with all the knowledge Luwin had acquired, there were still some things that were impossible. Alas, the opposite seemed to have happened. Luwin doubted he’d ever forget the sight it made. The glass candle in the Black Room. That unpleasantly bright light. It did strange things to the few colors it cast into the dark. White was as bright as fresh fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, and shadows became so black that they look like holes in the world. More so than even the pitch blackness he’d wallowed in up to that point. It was claimed that when the glass candles burn, sorcerers can see across mountains, seas and deserts, give men visions and dreams and communicate with one another half a world apart. Luwin could well believe it after doing so himself.

Or, perhaps more accurately, having it done _to_ him.

Abruptly, Luwin realised he had both hands outstretched, about to grab onto the candle and squeeze until skin and flesh gave a tribute of lifeblood to the razor-sharp edges. The last beams of reflected light glanced off the fringes of the candle, glinting red on black almost invitingly, like embers amid ash. Disturbed, he pulled away, shook his head and staggered back to the bed, awash with light-headedness not wholly owed to thirst and starvation. If death wanted him for the trespass of watching it at work, it would have to come for him the old fashioned way.

The evening passed in a tide of unease, simmered into dread and then lightened into hope at the sound of the dumbwench heralding the arrival of dinner. He fell on the food and water ravenously, only afterwards noticing the small rolled-up node under the bread bowl. _‘Big mess. Will be a while. Here’s some food and water. It’s not poisoned, I promise – Marwyn.’_ The idea of poison hadn’t even occurred to him. Who would waste such a thing on him? What had the Archmaesters been doing that could reflect so poorly on him? The question drifted away in a flood of soul-shaking relief that Marwyn hadn’t forgotten him. Unlike Perestan or Norren or Ryam, he hadn’t forgotten him.

It was the only thing that let him rest that night, however fitfully. Despite the sound of the wind from the open window and the wax candles he all but ransacked the room to light everywhere, he almost couldn’t manage it. The dark, he shamefully discovered, now terrified him.

He welcomed the hour of the owl, even if none of said birds came to hoot outside his window like they so often did outside the acolyte’s dormitories, much to Boar’s displeasure. Now, at least, he’d be awake because of routine rather than terror. He always woke up at night for two or three hours before getting a last wink of sleep prior to dawn. Usually he went to the observatory and studied the stars. His bronze link spoke for itself on that habit. Unfortunately, there would be no stargazing tonight. Even if Marwyn suddenly returned to let him out and finally give a bloody explanation.

Which, as a matter of fact, only happened when dawn might have broken were it spring or summer. The hour of the lark.

A heavy lock came undone. Heavy foot stomps on stone floor. The second lock unlatched, opening the bedroom door.

“Luwin, wake up!”

“Maester! You’re back! “

“Oh lad, you couldn’t sleep a wink, could you?”

“That’s not-“

“Just as well, we’ve work to do!

“Maester, what-“

“Get me that box-no, the other box!”

“Could you please just-?“

“No time, your friends will explain what they can – steady now, I need that! Oh just put it on the bed, you’re still too weak, get me the books on the desk, there’s a good lad, now here, change into these, quickly!”

‘These’ turned out to be a thin cloak and a set of blue-grey brigandine armor with a grey outline of a direwolf sewn as a crest. “Maester, these look like-“

“I know, congratulations, lad, you get to live out all your boyhood fantasies of spycraft you never knew you had, you’re lucky you have those grey northman’s eyes-“

“Archmaester! Please.”

Marwyn sighed, stopped in his packing and turned to look up at him seriously. “A bunch of grey rats decided they knew better than everyone up to the high lords themselves and did many naughty things, most recently trying to murder the wife and son of a Warden of the Realm, or so it goes. What happened to you is every one of the rats who wanted you for themselves getting terminally distracted by winter coming south. What’s befallen the Citadel is Hightower trying to steal winter’s prey before knowing Stark was just days out when his ravens reached here. And what’s happening _now_ is me trying to get you out of here alive instead of letting you be cut and dumped in a sewer like every other one of the Hightower’s loose ends, real and imagined. Incidentally, you didn’t light that glass candle. Neither did I. Magic hasn’t come back. Any other questions? No? Good. Now put on that helmet and let me get those straps…”

Luwin was shocked, astonished, horrified and terrified by turns, but before he knew it he was ‘helping’ Marwyn carry out his wax-sealed box while disguised as a Stark household guard.

It was a box like all the others he’d seen used over the years to transport tomes safely, made of dry wood sealed in wax against the elements. Marwyn guided him out into his antechamber. The large, round room had no flame in the hearth and the stone walls were bare of their usual faded tapestries and ragged maps. Through the door of oak and iron they exited his chambers into the flight of steps that took them down to the vestibule, and finally to the cargo lift at the other end of the Ravenry’s north tower. It was crawling with Hightower men everywhere Luwin looked. The Citadel had handled its own affairs for as long as written history, but now it looked less like a learning institution and more like a castle under enemy occupation. The only familiar face was at the end of the vestibule. Hother Umber was checking over a large, tar-coated crate. As soon as they reached him, Marwyn handed him their box, which the tall northman put inside.

“That should be the last of this shipment,” Marwyn told the older acolyte. “I’ll be leaving you with the good guardsman here, you can figure out directions between yourselves.”

“Aye, we will.”

Marwyn nodded tersely and went off… somewhere. Luwin abruptly felt soul-stricken. Should he have said goodbye? Was he ever going to see the man again?

“Right then, guardsman,” Hother said, as if he didn’t see through Luwin’s disguise despite all but mothering him for the past seven years and the rest of their roost mates for years before that. “If you’ll help me push this onto the lift, we should be done after just one more stop.”

Feeling increasingly as if this were a dream, Luwin pretended to ‘help’ the big man push the tumbrel onto the cargo lift. Then, because the lift was only an iron cage attached to a winch that concealed nothing as it descended, he tried to stand still and tall and look like he belonged in that armor. Hother ‘guided’ him out of the Ravenry, over the bridge to the other side of the Honeywine and into the acolyte living quarters. Luwin pretended not to recognise what few passing familiar faces were out at that ungodly hour. He also strove not to show his relief at the all-new Hightower guards waving Hother through with nothing but grunting familiarity seen through the torchlight. Even if he still had no idea what he had to be relieved over.

“If you’ll follow me, Ser, there’s just some personal effects to be getting gone with. Dorm’s this way.”

Luwin nodded and let himself be led to the dormitory where he’d slept since finishing his time as a scribe.

It was only when the door closed and hid them from view that Hother dropped the pretense and practically lifted him off the floor with the force of his hug, armor and all. “We thought you dead!” The man said gruffly, before dropping him and pulling his helmet off. “Gods be good, it _is_ you. I-we thought – Oh, if those rats hadn’t already been fucked half a dozen ways, I’d stick my foot so far up their bungholes that-“

“-You’d waste all our time, that’s what,” Ryben said from where he was quickly stuffing his nightwear into a heavy satchel. “Much as I’d love the chance to laugh at your face when they don’t even feel your little prick going in, we don’t have time for your mothering!”

“Oh piss off, Ribs,” Hother growled, before turning back to Luwin and fussing over him like the two and thirty years-old mother hen he was. “Already done it for you anyway, satchel’s on the bed – no, leave it! You can’t be seen with it, already strapped it to mine, I’ll bring it. You eat this here sausage, kept it from dinner and here, have this here bread too. It’s a day old but I soaked it in a bit of ale, should wash down nice and easy.”

“Like he did every night just for you, Luwin, let Mama Whoresbane make it all better.”

Hother shoved Ryben hard enough to faceplant on the small patch of floor, to which Ryben retaliated by picking up Luwin’s 5 days-old mug of water from the counter beneath the window-side bed and splashing the other acolyte toe to head. Somehow, Luwin was spared most of the spray.

“You fucking cunt!” Hother spluttered, lunging at the smaller man red-faced with rage. “I’ll break those twigs you call legs-“

THUNK

“Fucking really?” Boar growled sleepily from the top-right cot, glaring murderously over the knife he’d just stabbed into the sideboard. “You can’t keep a lid on it? Fucking now of all times? Where’s Mullin?”

“Out in the town,” Hother growled, holding Ryben off the floor by his woollen tunic. “Too far away to save this little shit this time.” But the man dumped the other acolyte on his arse. “Piss on him anyway, we got important shit to do.”

“Nice to see you accept my great wisdom,” Ryben grunted, getting to his feet and rubbing his bony arse. “Best we get going. Gotta be there by noon or we don’t go nowhere.”

Go where?

“Right then, I’d best be leaving first,” Boar said, rolling off the bed without the ladder like he always did, landing lightly. They all leaned away and stepped around him as per rote. “Can’t have us all seen leaving together.”

“What’s your game?” Hother asked suspiciously at seeing Boar already dressed for travel, boots and all. “You leaving the Citadel too? You’re the only one here that’s had nothing to do with any of this mess.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I guess you’ll just have to wonder.” That said, Boar’s slender frame all but disappeared underneath his voluminous winter cloak and he left without another word.

Leaving the citadel? Too? This mess? What the hells was going on!?

Luwin bit into his bread and sausage. Viciously. The taste was of bread, ale, meat and a king’s feast made with love.

“Right,” Hother grunted, glaring at Ryben in case of any smart comments coming. “Now we _have_ to wait a few heartbeats. Ribs, check Boar’s bed for any last-minute ‘surprises’. Luwin, once you’re done I guess you can go ahead and make sure nothing’s missing from your pack if you really want.”

“Hother, what’s been-“

“Not here,” the tall man hissed. “Wait till we’re outside.”

Luwin barely bit back the frustration at being constantly interrupted even now and did as directed. Swallowing the last of the food, he went to look through the bag. Fortunately, everything was there. His ring of links, his medical pastes and powders, the baked clay gnome he’d made for his pottery link was there too, wrapped in cotton wool. So were the starseer parts that had earned Hother his second steel link and Luwin’s favorite pen – Hother again, made for his third smithing link and Luwin was _still_ cross that Archmaester Garizon didn’t also give him a red gold link for that. Then there were Luwin’s prized books he’d copied himself during his time as a scribe. Maester Nicol’s _Measure of the Days_ , Archmaester Lyman’s _Kingdoms of the Sky_ , Archmaester Fomas’ _Lies of the Ancients_ – which he’d probably be reassessing soon – and _On Miasmas_ by Harmon. Below, above and around were his summer clothes and spare underthings, all tightly folded and snugly packed.

Luwin wondered how many times Hother or the others had packed and re-packed his things. He couldn’t help but feel touched at their worry and fretting, even if it was too embarrassing to acknowledge it out loud.

Once they confirmed that Boar hadn’t left behind any ‘surprises’ and Hother had his and Luwin’s packs strapped to his back, the three went back to where they’d left their cargo.

“Right then, guardsman, if you’ll help me seal this, we should be done here,” Hother said, handing him an urn of molten tar from the firepit built specifically for the task. “Best not to keep your lord waiting no more.”

The books were being sent out of the city. They had to be. Probably by ship. Small wax-sealed boxes packed inside tar-sealed crates was the only way to send books by ship without them starting to wear after the first few days, to say nothing of storms. The Manderly vessel flashed through his mind at the thought. It was a good thing acolytes and scribes were tasked to do this so often because the routine was the only reason he didn’t drop or spill anything. Events were rapidly catching up to him. Those that he suffered and those he didn’t. Those few he had a say in and those few he wished he did. Whatever happened from here, he didn’t need his lead link to know he’d never come back for many years, if ever. There were books he still wanted to read. Friends he’d never again see. He wouldn’t even get to say goodbye to little Yandel.

They left immediately after, barring a very brief obstacle in the form of a blustering Hightower sentry that demanded he remove his helmet and thankfully didn’t recognise him. They, their cart of books and the mule now pulling said burden then finally cleared the Citadel’s gatehouse and the two great Sphinxes on either side of it.

That was where Luwin all but stumbled to a halt if not for Hother nudging him forward and almost sending him falling down the steps. Even so he couldn’t help but crane his neck both ways, stricken with shock and dismay and disbelief.

There were heads on spikes on both sides of the road as they exited, like some ghoulish feed for the great sphinxes of stone to feast upon, cast in grisly shadows by the light of the braziers. Heads he knew. Some he knew well. Acolytes Barneby and Henley. Maesters Toman, Gulian, Willifer and two dozens more he couldn’t name. And higher than them all were the heads of Archmaesters. Perestan, Norren, Ryam, Vaellyn, Walgrave and Benedict, their faces frozen in horror and pain.

“They had their tongues cut out and then executions were done outside for everyone to see,” Ryben murmured from next to him. “Acolytes ‘n scribes have been turning up strangled, frozen, washed up or mugged to death in ditches too, dozens of’em.”

“Cold seeped in quick,” Hother added lowly as he guided the mule from two steps behind, to further enforce Luwin’s unbidden mummery. “Those faces will stay _stark_ and fresh for years I reckon.”

“I want answers,” Luwin hissed as he wrestled with a suddenly rebellious stomach. “Now.”

“But Luwin, you haven’t asked any questions!” Ryben said.

“Oh shove off and tell him already,” Hother muttered with a harsh nudge to the other acolyte’s back. “He starved and thirsted and almost died, I’ll not have him go mad too.”

“Fine,” Ryben huffed as he always did when deprived of the word games he always liked to serve the latest gossip with. “Luwin, noticed anything strange before that big test of yours? Maybe an archmaester or five acting like they’d lost half their wits overnight?”

“No… Archmaester Norren seemed distracted when he sealed me in, but he’s the seneschal. I assumed there was some disciplinary matter or other weighing on him.”

“Here’s what we know for sure happened: ‘bout a sennight before you went under, the Citadel and Hightower both get ravens from the North. Nothing much happens. But then envoys from the North are spotted coming down by land just two days out, among them the Lord Warden himself. That lights a fire under the Archmaesters’ arses and I’d’ve had a _lot_ of gossip to sell if they’d gotten past the shouting part of that oh so secret meeting that really shouldn’t have been held in a multi-story-tall hall with dozens of nooks about to be napping inside. Unfortunately, the Hightower decided to invade the Citadel at the same time and I barely hid away before they took me in as a co-conspirator of whatever those old men had been about. As you just saw with your own eyes, whatever was in those ravens _really_ pissed off the Old Man of the Tower.”

Luwin gaped in his helmet, aghast. “…I thought Marwyn was japing!”

“What? What do you mean? What did the Archmaester tell you?”

“A bunch of grey rats tried to murder the wife and son of a Warden of the Realm, is what he said-“

“They sure did,” Hother growled from behind like an angry bear. “What all did he tell you?”

Uneasy, Luwin told them what Marwyn had told him.

“They tried to kill the Stark, is what they did. The little Stark. And the Lady Lyarra! Those fucking cunts! I’ll kill’em! I’ll drag them from their seven hells and make a blood eagle out of ‘em!”

“Quiet!” Ryben punched Hother’s arm and tugged Luwin forward again. “Don’t make another scene!”

“Fuck off, Ribs!” But he lowered his voice and they resumed their trek. “’Don’t make a scene’ he says. Did you forget earlier? Woulda’ been worse if I didn’t lose my head. I ain’t made no maiden vows or anythin’ else, no matter how long I’ve been away from my home in the North. Lord Stark is still my liege lord and he’ll stay my liege lord till the day I die.”

“Well your liege lord wants to get the rest of his business done all quiet like, methinks,” Ryben said snidely. “So put a sock in it.”

“What else has been going on?” Luwin asked before they really got going. “Is this crate bound for the merman ship?”

“You know about that? What else has Marwyn told you?”

“He didn’t, I saw it out the window of his room.”

“He doesn’t have windows in his rooms,” Hother said, and how did he know? “I helped him pack his things.”

“I mean his bedchamber.”

“He let you in there?” Both of them looked mighty shocked, Ryben especially. “Fuck, he must _really_ like you, Luwin.”

“Locked me in, more like.”

“Good think he did,” Hother grumbled as they followed the cobbled road downriver. “Half the boys in the ditches didn’t know half as many of those grey rats as you did. Hells, even some of them up on those spikes held fewer ears than you did.”

Luwin was torn between horror at his situation and being touched that neither of his companions thought to question his innocence in light of those facts. He cleared his throat. “Ahem. So, the crate?”

“The last of many we packed over the past few days and the latest of plenty more to leave by sea,” Ryben answered as they crossed the bridge to the Iron Isle where peddled all the smiths. “While you were getting done in, we’ve been spending half our time packing books to be shipped off. We and a bunch of others, about a dozen of us in all. We must’ve packed and hauled tomes and scrolls for every last subject known to man, and then some.”

“First men or northmen, all of us,” Hother said from behind, voice almost masked by the creak of the wheels on cobbles. “None of us vowed or chained. None of us with fewer than two silver links.”

Luwin didn’t need to have the implications explained to him. “And the other half of your time?”

“Crawling up and down the docks, the Apothecary Quarter, the Thieves Market and Ragpicker's Wynd looking for poorly defined dusts, draughts and random ingredients. Here, maybe you can make better sense of it than we did.” So saying, Ryben dug through a pocked in his cloak and handed over a surprisingly thick roll of paper leafs. They were held together at one corner with an odd metal loop that was needle-thin and went through all the sheets at two different points, keeping them securely in place. A clever device.

The contents were nowhere near as clever. The title ‘Medical Knowledge Test for Healer Aspirants’ was a poor fit for what was effectively a list of poorly described substances and reagents. Colorless acid with pungent smell capable of eating through skin – he didn’t know about colorless, but that sounded otherwise like stomach acid. White salt-like grain dust that draws water from air and is capable of preventing the formation of ice – he didn’t know this one, normal salt already did all of that, trick question perhaps? Although there was a rarer form of salt used in preserves, so it could be that. Colorless liquid that smells of pear drops and is used in glues and solvents – probably ester. The list went on and one and on and barely half had been marked found. Luwin supposed it wasn’t a terrible way to assess knowledge of mixtures or alchemy, but the so-called test seemed a tad too focused for his tastes. Equally non-specific as well – most of the descriptions on the list fit multiple reagents or ingredients, some partially and some fully.

Luwin made a show of studying the papers while they walked the rest of the way, but his mind was on other things. Chiefly on recent events, deductions and _implications_. The messages from the North were clearly incriminating in some sinister fashion. Their timing so close to Stark’s arrival suggested that whatever response he had in mind was time sensitive. The Hightower’s abrupt, messy and _belated_ pre-emptive action spoke either of punishment… or of covering up and cutting loose ends that might have incriminated _him_. Or both. Or the belief that others would hold him responsible for whatever it was regardless of reality. That he did something so overt and messy spoke to the Hightower not seeing any better alternative, which meant that Stark had backed his messages and later actions with no small amount of external leverage. Lord Leyton Hightower must have sent out a veritable storm of ravens to fight it. Luwin couldn’t think of any other reason why the Isle of Ravens would be so much more sparsely populated than normal.

It was after they crossed the bridge from the Iron Isle to the Wide that they were waylaid by two hooded figures, one of whom he didn’t know. The other one was carrying a metal rod in his hand, pulled a wheeled chest with the other and turned out to be Marwyn himself. Ryben and Hother were surprised at seeing them but kept their peace.

“So tell me, boy,” the archmaester said as they fell into step. “Figured everything out yet?”

“…There was a faction in the citadel led by a number of archmaesters. They conspired for goals they considered important enough to justify the assassination of Great House first-liners. Lord Stark discovered it, which suggests his prior maester was involved. The nature and timing of his response suggests he thought the Hightowers might _also_ have been involved. Or perhaps he thought they’d purge the issue to avoid being incriminated, as indeed they seem to have done. Finally, whatever may or may not be the truth of the matter, Stark seemingly has enough leverage to force concessions of his own regardless.”

“Sounds like a theory. Now, can you guess what you missed?”

“… I wouldn’t have missed it if I could, would I?”

“Ha!” Marwyn’s laugh was a grunting as every other sound he ever made. “Listen boys and listen well. Maesters are the principal historians of the Seven Kingdoms. It gives a new twist to the common saying that history is written by the victors – the victors are already historians. Hightower’s purge was a total mess and beyond excessive. Why kill so many boys and men? So many without a chain even? Obedience to the hierarchy of the Citadel is to be expected. To become a maester one needs to conform to the thought of the archmaesters, and probably as well to their political opinions. Rare is an acolyte that doesn’t parrot all the views of his teachers. The best servants of the Citadel might hope to serve in the finest castle, and even to be promoted archmaester, of course they’ll kiss arse and suck whatever cock will get them there! The Citadel has the privilege of the assignations. A maester not well trusted would spend his life on a mountain in the Vale or at Bear Island or at the Wall. Why do you think Aemon Targaryen is freezing his balls off at the Wall? He should have been Grand Maester but instead they sent him off to the edge of the world. Great houses will _always_ be served by the favorite pupils of the archmaesters, but none of this says there is a deliberate conspiracy or indoctrination.”

“So there wasn’t a conspiracy?” Ryben asked incredulously. “With all due respect, Archmaester, that’s a crock of shit.”

“So certain are you, boy? When you don’t know shit besides what I told you? Or what you heard from random mouths who heard it from other mouths? Say there was something those fools with their heads on spikes were really after. A better future. A world led by mind and reason rather than force of arms. Peace upon the realm. The elimination of the supernatural or some other political cause. A process of selection of like-minded people could suffice for all of it, it doesn’t take some secret cult! If it were just that, the Citadel wouldn’t be so successful discouraging children like you from coming to me to study magic. They’d only egg you on! All it takes is being denied a link or three by the archmaesters or have your chain taken and anyone will fall in line.”

“None of that means there _wasn’t_ a conspiracy,” Hother pointed out. “And Lord Stark acted fair certain there was.”

“I never denied there was one either, though notice how you call to authority precisely as I said you would, not questioning the provided truth. It’s just the choice of authority that’s different.”

“Don’t go accusing my lord of lying,” Hother said with a scowl.

“I didn’t, I implied it at most. I accused _you_ of credulity.”

“Maester,” Luwin sighed, breaking in before they got carried away. “Was there a conspiracy or not?”

“Who’s to say there wasn’t? Who’s to say there still isn’t? What if Ebrose the Healer was in it? You think Old Leyton would suspect him after he delivered every one of his children? What if the Hightower was in on it himself? What if he still is? What if the Faith is involved too? ‘The Oldtown Triad acts in lockstep,’ isn’t that the saying? How would we know? How can we know the people executed aren’t all scapegoats? And even if it’s been crushed, how do we know it won’t come back in a decade? The dead tell no tales, but they held sway over the hearts and minds of old and young alike for decades. If there’s a deliberate conspiracy at the Citadel, it might exist at the level of the archmaesters and at that level only. You’d be mad to think every maester leaves the Citadel with a secret agenda. The archmaesters themselves are never all on the same page. The grey rats are not the grey sheep, and there are many who are neither. The real question is this: could enough Archmaesters and their yes-men really coordinate to manipulate the whole realm, and manufacture murders? Marriages? Regicides perhaps?”

The questioned loomed over them, heavy and damning.

“… Could they?” Luwin finally asked when no one else would, thinking of maesters and their hold on all ravens and Lords that seldom checked who read their missives and how and when and why.

“Old Leyton Hightower obviously thought Rickard Stark believed so,” Maryn shrugged, maddeningly. “Just like the remaining archmaesters are sure I was one of the grey rats who sold out the rest to save my own hide. Not that they had the balls to say so when they kicked me out.”

“They what!?” Luwin almost didn’t realise that outrage was his own.

“They did that?” Hother grunted from behind. “Cockless fucks.”

“’You broke your vows of political neutrality’ was their choice of nonsense,” Marwyn said with a vague wave.

“Maester!” Luwin cried, so aghast he forgot the role he was playing. “They can’t do that to you!”

Marwyn pat him fondly on the hand. “You’re a good boy, Luwin. Now do try to recall you’re a Stark guard right now, hmm?”

“Maester…”

“You’re also still missing the obvious, my lad, but that’s alright. If it’s you, I can wait.”

“Or you could just tell me for once,” Luwin groused, pretending not to notice the meaningful looks Ryben was sending the archmaester and him.

“But then I’d be telling you what to think, not teaching you how to think for yourself. Here’s a hint though – I don’t ask near as many rhetorical question as I seem.”

Luwin blinked, then lost himself in picking over everything that had been spoken over the past few days, over and over again.

He didn’t emerge from his distraction until he heard dogs barking. Shaking his head, Luwin lifted his eyes from the cobbled road to see dogs bringing fetch sticks to the lifelike statues dotting the grounds of the Quill and Tankard island inn in front of them. And ahead of them, waiting to meet them at the foot of the bridge, were two familiar men finally distinguishable in the faint light of the late winter dawn. Boar. And Mullin.

Mullin, who stood amidst a gaggle of young and unfamiliar acolytes who looked tense and terrified as if their lives had ended and the broad-shouldered, solid man was the only reason they hadn’t bolted like the scared rabbits they were.

“Lord Stark didn’t shy away from making use of his leverage,” Luwin asked Marwyn as the group finally noticed their arrival. “Did he?”

“He did not.”

“Those boxes and crates, the books and scrolls inside them, they weren’t chosen at random, were they?”

“No they were not. I provided the core list, though truthfully Hother saw to most of it.”

Luwin waited to see if the other man would say anything, but he didn’t. The silence coming from him was as meaningful as the realisation that he had just achieved. “Lord Stark means to build his own Citadel,” Luwin said, throat going dry. “Doesn’t he?”

“That’s what I like about you, Luwin. You have such wonderful common sense. If only you didn’t misuse it to dismiss everything outside your narrow frame of reference! Now come on. Let’s go and meet your new patron, shall we? Before the Hightower does something rash again. Like maybe decide he can live with murdering Lord Stark after all, now that said peer of his has all but guaranteed that every other kingdom will do the same as him by winter’s end.”

They went.


	19. All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (III)

## “-. 274 AC .-“

“Lord Rickard of House Stark cut a dashing figure. He was tall of stature, solemn of countenance, mindful in every action, and bedecked in the singularly most unique apparel. His head was bare. His shoulder-length dark hair fluttered in the winter winds, tamed only by two plaits that sprung from his temples and merged together at the back into one braid. His strong hands bore no glove or gauntlet, but the rest of him was adorned in a mighty suit of plate, castle-forged steel over mail protecting him from chin to heel. The cuirass shone. The plackart gleamed. The faulds flowed into a split kilt of studded leather all the way down to the knees. And over it all, overlayed only by the man’s brassarts and mighty pauldrons, was a great coat of sable leather lined with wool and suede. Its sleeves were long, the lower flaps fluttered around the angles of his greaves, its seams were stitched in double chains, and all along the front were buttons made of polished silver. They hung free and undone despite the freezing cold. Yet even in the dusk-like dimness of the winter dawn they twinkled like-“

“Like your whole face will twinkle if you don’t. _Stop. Narrating!_ ”

“What!?” Boar turned on his heel with a gasp, outraged. “Is this a heathen I see before me? For shame, Whoresbane! I am _describing_ , not narrating! Do thine virgin ears fail you even now? Do thine eyes account for nothing? Look at the man! Look at his face, his clothes, hells, look at his hands!”

“You’ll get a close look at _my_ hands if you don’t stop ogling my lord right now.”

“My word! The nerve! To think you’d be so disrespectful as to imply your noble liege needs _you_ to protect his virtue! The nerve! The scandal! When I mean but to convey upon you the deepest insight into your fatherland!”

“Oh this better be good.”

“His nails, you boor! They’re _perfect_. No knife or shear can yield such firm softness. Either he’s got someone around to file them down for hours, or someone’s had the leisure and coin to spend on inventing some all-knew, unknown contraption to cut them down to size. Either means the North has changed enough to afford diverting time and resources, during a realm-shaking event, in _winter_ , purely towards the pursuit of convenience. The North is turning _vain_.”

“Vain, vain, vain!” Cried a white raven from the eaves above them, scaring ten years off Luwin’s life.

He wasn’t the only one. “Well that wasn’t terrifying at all-oh my!”

Surprised to hear Boar’s breath, of all people, being taken away, Luwin looked away from his examination of the sledhouses to see Lord Stark having finally turned his head in their direction.

Boar gave a long, low whistle under his breath that sounded nothing else but admiring. “You know what, Whoresbane, I take it all back. With a face like that I understand _perfectly_ why savages like you would flock to protect the man. There’s natural order and then there’s _that_. Maybe I should grow a beard of my own if that’s what I can look forward too. Mmm-Mmm!”

Hother gaped at the young man, completely lost for words.

Luwin carefully did not broadcast his own feelings lest anyone realise he agreed with Boar here. There was gold and silver in that there beard or he’s a Dornish Prince. He was grateful Ryben was still inside the inn changing to travel wear. He didn’t want to risk anyone _else_ remarking on Hother’s ruddy cheeks somehow going even deeper scarlet than they were already. That all wasn’t just anger, even he could tell that much.

Which was just as well, because Hother didn’t get the chance to act on it.

Rickard Stark had finally approached them.

“Six and ten arrivals,” said the Warden of the North. Luwin pretended not to notice Boar’s overdramatic swoon. “That’s two more than I reckoned. Who intrudes on matters of the North?”

“That would be me, your lordship!” Boar said grandly, stepping out of their huddle and giving the most perfect, most grandiose bow Luwin had ever seen. “Boeryn Sand, at your service. Healer, alchemist, interpreter and orator extraordinaire! Forgive my boldness, my lord, but on hearing that all of my cellmates were being spirited away, I simply had to assess their patron for myself! Of course, I didn’t expect I’d find you – your cause! I didn’t expect I’d find _your_ _cause_ so compelling, but fate makes fools of us all these days. I offer you my services for a year and a day, if you’ll have me.”

“Do you now?” Lord Stark asked, giving nothing away as he beheld the Dornishman. The _young_ Dornishman, Luwin couldn’t help but note when compared to the nobleman. Boar was barely older than Luwin himself, and he’d only just turned five and te- “Hother, how do you spell his name?”

“B-o-e-r-y-n, my lord.”

“Hmm.” Lord Stark… did _not_ sound appeased. “Let me see if I understand correctly. We stand here in the aftermath of the worst purge in the Citadel’s recorded history. Said purge occurred from fear of what _I_ might do worse when I got here. My journey took place because my supposedly loyal maester attempted to murder my wife and heir as part of some conspiracy. He did this using a skill in poisons he’d kept hidden. And now you come here. One among many who saw their lives ended or ruined over the past few days for being involved with all that, however remotely. You intrude on my business unasked and unlooked for. You play an exaggerated caricature of yourself in the same breath as you all but gloat over possessing the same set of skills as my wife and son’s would-be murderer. And in doing all of that, you waste the precious time I could be using to instead make haste back home where my wife is dying as we speak. Considering all this and the fact that _anagrams are not subtle_ , should we skip the theatrics all the way to the part where I take you hostage?” At a sign from the man, the half of the two hundred Stark guards loitering about came to attention, drew their swords and surrounded them. “Or would you like to recant on any of the claims you just made?”

Luwin heard and witnessed everything as if in a fog. Dimly, he noticed that Hother had all but leapt away from their cellmate and drawn a short sword from… somewhere. He didn’t look like he’d expected the upset, though, any more than Luwin had. Or anyone else. The three youngest acolytes were literally clinging to Mullin in sheer fright.

Boar carefully looked around at the men and weapons surrounding them, ten of whom were within leaping distance. “I can see how my actions would invite suspicion, especially given the tumultuous circumstances of your presence here, my lord. Perhaps a beneficial compromise that would make my day _and_ assuage all of your misgivings is not as simple to strike as I thought.”

“Not even close,” Rickard Stark said flatly.

“My lord,” Umber said roughly. “Is it a faceless man, you think?”

“No,” the lord replied. “Just a boy with more nerve than sense.”

“By the Rhoyne, my lord!” Boar balked, aghast. “You needn’t subject me to your cutting wit so harshly. I know when to back down.”

“No you do not, or you’d have dropped the mummery well before this. Someday you will overstretch and it will kill you. It won’t be a very easy death either, if you antagonise whoever it is half as much as you did a Lord Warden of the Realm. You overstep and overreach. Much like my son in that way, except he has the excuse of being but one and ten name days.”

Boar almost seemed to react to that, but instead gave a put upon sigh. “Never fear, my lord, I know when I’m not welcome.”

Luwin stared at Boar incredulously. How could he still make light of… whatever this was?

Rickard Stark was even less impressed. “I don’t believe you. Nor would I trust your ability to live up to your claim if I did. That being said, while I _can_ afford calling both your competence and honour into question somewhat more than you can mine, that would just be an even bigger waste of my time. Which is why I’ll be writing the relevant parties about this as soon as I depart.”

Boar’s composure finally cracked. Not that Luwin could blame him. He’d do more than crack if someone told him he’d be contacting his parents over… whatever this was.

Wait, Boar was a bastard. Did he even know his own parents? Did he have both parents?

The matter of anagrams and spelling and hostage-taking finally stumbled into their proper pattern and Luwin could but stare at his acquaintance of two years, jaw dropped.

“… Alright then,” said the Dornishman. “I’ll get out of your admittedly exquisite hair, by your leave my lord?”

“Go.”

Oberyn Martell bowed shortly and turned to address one last time his four ‘friends.’ “Alas, dear fellows, this is it for us. I enjoyed our time together! Do write to me sometime, hmm? And close that mouth, Luwin. It’s unseemly.”

The Prince of Dorne then promptly sauntered off.

Luwin stared after him, barely noticing the white raven following him from the rooftops while struggling to make sense of what had just unfolded. Was _this_ why the Princess of Dorne just ‘happened’ to come across Boar earlier that year? Just ‘happened’ to hire him along for their journey to and back from that trip to the Westerlands? The triumphant satisfaction that usually accompanied the completion of a puzzle didn’t emerge this time. Luwin had not expected to be deceived from that quarter. He hadn’t though betrayal would feel like this. Hadn’t expected to be made to feel like such a fool. A bigger fool than any maester or archmaester had managed to make him feel like. Ever.

He exchanged disturbed looks with the rest of his friends. If they really were that. Luwin suddenly felt resentment bubble inside him as well. With this one act, ‘Boar’ had made him question every last one of his other friendships as well.

Fucking Dornish.

He couldn’t go back home to the North fast enough.

“Right then,” Rickard Stark said once ‘Boar’ finally passed beyond the island inn’s grounds and out of sight. “Whoever else is here without vouchsafing or invitation, speak now.”

It was at that point that Luwin realized no one had actually told him precisely where he fell in all thi-

“That would be my companion here,” Marwyn interjected, stepping up from the lean-to next to the kennels. The squat man had been playing with the sleigh dogs. Two of the wolf-like hounds jumped playfully around him even now. He pat them fondly on the head as he gestured to his tall, slightly stooped companion. “This is Qyburn.”

“Which tells me precisely nothing,” Lord Stark said.

“Figured you could do with the prestige of a ‘real’ maester to start you off, however long that lasts.” When that didn’t appease the taller man, the Archmaester grunted. “He’s got one silver link more than I do.”

What? No... That's impossible!

Lord Stark suddenly focused his entire attention on the willowy man.

The man – Qyburn – faltered at the sudden attention, but reached up to push back the hood of his grey robe, revealing a man older than everyone else present. His clothes were somewhat frayed and sewn unevenly, but that stopped mattering the moment the complete maester’s chain around his neck was revealed. Luwin wished he was close enough to count the silver links in it. The man didn’t seem to know what to actually say though. Instead, he reached into his worn satchel and pulled out a familiar stack of papers. “I’ve identified almost all of the substances here.” He dithered awkwardly, then shuffled forward to hold them out to the lord. “… Most on the list probably won’t be useful for what you need them, but I can see potential uses for some of the matches.”

Lord Stark took the papers and skimmed them briefly before returning his attention to the man.

“There are some substances that aren’t peddled anywhere in Oldtown, at least not openly. There are composites or by-products of other processes as well. I know the process for creating most of them but it _should_ be possible to go without them, if my guess about your intended process is correct.”

“And that is?”

“Bread mold medicine.”

 _That_ jarred Lord Stark out of his self-possession quite thoroughly.

For good reason too, Luwin thought. Mold tea? That only ever made things worse. It was known! Whatever few cases were documented where it helped at all involved entire slurries of other compounds that happened to somehow interact with each other and-

Luwin’s thoughts staggered to a halt. Compounds. Interaction.

Catalysts.

Infections.

A spell of clarity descended on Luwin’s mind. No one there had fewer than two links of silver in their chain, complete or not. Was this why? Was Lady Stark suffering from an infection or plague of some sort, rather than poison as everyone had assumed off-hand?

Qyburn nodded, much more confident after having seen Lord Stark’s reaction. “You mean to create a plague killer.”

Rickard Stark peered at Maester Qyburn intently for a time. “And what all do you know about it?”

“I’ve already done it,” Qyburn said.

For a moment, Luwin didn’t realize what he’d just heard. The old man sounded like a smarmy lickspittle.

Rickard Stark certainly seemed astounded enough himself.

“It’s not perfected,” Qyburn amended after. “The results are unstable. The first set of steps of a larger process I’ve yet to undertake. That, I assume, is what most of the reagents you sent buyers for are meant to fix? Whoever started down this path is a genius. Let me meet them and I’ll complete the work, my lord, I promise you.”

Lord Stark continued to just stand there and look at the maester until Qyurn started fidgeting, before addressing Archmaester Marwyn again. “You collect interesting strays, Archmaester.” The Lord glanced at Qyburn’s chain. “Or perhaps not quite a stray in this case.”

“He wasn’t gonna last much longer at the Citadel anyway,” Marwyn grunted. “He’s been cutting people open while they’re still alive. Oh, and he’s also looking into necromancy. Speaking of which,” Marwyn started to dig through his pockets as if it meant nothing that everyone from Luwin to Lord Stark were staring at him in disbelief over what he’d just thrown out there. Or, in Qyburn’s case, outright horror. “Here it is!”

Qyburn reeled, tried to catch the thrown object, failed and flailed all the way to the ground to pick it up. A link. A chain link made of valyrian steel. It glinted in the pale light of winter. It glinted like a similar link _already_ glinted on the chain around his neck, even so far away.

On noticing everyone’s attention on him, Qyburn hunched on himself. “… They were none of them uwilling,” he said weakly.

Luwin wondered, perhaps madly, if that even implied sanity when it could just as easily be because Qyburn didn’t look like he could force anyone to do anything at all. Of course they weren’t unwilling, they were dead! And what’s this about cutting the living?

“Qyburn here’s about as ingratiating as anyone you’ll ever meet,” Marwyn supplied ‘helpfully.’ “Take him on and let him research what he wants on his own time and he’ll stick with you until he dies. Put him under someone with actual scruples and it’ll all work out.”

Luwin stared. So did everyone else.

Marwyn ignored them, spat a glob of phlegm to the side, staining the snow red, then subjected the high lord in their midst to the hardest gaze Luwin had ever seen on him. “Now, my Lord Stark. Let’s discuss terms.”

“Excuse me?”

Marwyn gave a ghastly smile, his teeth stained with the red juice of the sourleaf he chewed even now. “I helped bring down the grey rats because our interests aligned. I gave what little assistance I could to your book requisition because I wanted Hother and whoever else you won to your side to finish their studies properly. I delivered young Luwin to you because I wanted to rescue my young pupil from overzealous Hightower soldiery. And I endorsed whoever I could from these men and children because I felt them worth the trouble. But I never agreed to endorse _you_. I never said I’d pledge my service to you either. I like what I’ve seen of you so far, but first impressions sour quickly. So tell me, Lord Warden. Why should I pledge myself to you when I can have my pick of hundreds of others? Why should I back your grand ambitions when I could just retire and write my books in peace and quiet? Why should I help you break the Citadel’s spine instead of leaving on another journey to the east? Why should I entrust these children with you, even? Instead of taking them with me to nurture them myself?”

Luwin had thought for days that he’d gone mad. Then he thought the world had gone mad. Now he _knew_ with total certainty that his mad master had gone even madder than everything else in Luwin’s life combined.

But instead of spite or malice or censure or rebuke, the only thing that could be heard in the wake of that brazen challenge was a free, rumbling laughter.

“Aha…” Lord Rickard Stark sighed when he was done, aware but unbothered by Marwyn’s way of diverting his attention from Qyburn and the rest. “Tell me, Archmaester. Does the citadel teach anything about tooth drawing?”

Marwyn blinked in obvious surprise. “… I won’t talk about that out in the open.”

Eh?

“Inside then, while the young ones get ready to leave.”

As they were led into the inn, Luwin found himself experiencing no small amount of shock he couldn’t quite contain. For a moment there, he could have sworn Marwyn the Mage had actually looked embarrassed.

They ended up in the Quill and Tankard’s common room, sat around the longtable nearest to the fireplace blazing from the wall along the eastern side.

“Eat, drink, rest your feet and try not to murder each other,” Marwyn told them before he followed Lord Stark to some private chamber or other.

Looking over his traveling companions, Luwin realized that was the first time they’d all been together in one place. It was an awkward feeling. He didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. Neither did anyone else, it seemed. They ate mostly in silence, contemplating their hearty meals as much as they did each other. Everyone was either first man or northman, just like Hother had told him. Most were much like him as well, lacking other prospects outside the Citadel. Some seemed far too young to have their lives turned upside down as well, let alone traveling for sennights and moons in winter. Then again, how many more had been close enough to one or more of the executed archmaesters to suffer the same?

The awkwardness stretched long after they finished eating and began nursing what drink they could or couldn’t stomach.

Then Mullin dug through his travel pack and pulled out something which he dropped on the table in front of him. A ring of chains. It thunk dully on the wood. “For those who don’t know, name’s Mullin. No last name.”

For someone who could convey everything else so well, the man was short on details when it came to himself. His chain links were barely half the story, and not the best light to judge him by when you counted them. One grey steel link for smithing, one black steel for architecture and engineering, one black iron for ravenry, two silver links for healing or he’d not have been brought on at all. The only standout was the set of three links of grey iron signifying knowledge of warcraft. For a man of three and twenty years sent to the Citadel at eight name days, it was a small number indeed. But they didn’t speak of his endurance, his athletics skill or the strength only Hother barely surpassed him in. They didn’t talk of his freakish observational skills and his ability to replicate any physical feat within the space of an hour. There was a reason he was considered more a fighter than maester material, and it wasn’t lack of a brain. To say nothing of his willingness to cut through any horseshit, like when Boar would wake up and narrowly ‘miss’ stabbing whichever of them had roused him from his beauty sleep. More than that, the man had an intrinsic ability to lead by example that Luwin had very rarely seen before the past few days.

Mullin was wasted as a scholar, Luwin thought but didn’t say. Case in point, everyone soon followed in his proverbial footsteps and presented their own links as well.

There was young Colemon, a thin lad with a long, skinny neck. He had the expected black iron link for ravenry, three links of silver for healing and one link of platinum representing natural science. There was Gulian, short and brown-haired with blue eyes. He had a link of ravenry and two silvers of his own, but also one link of brass for animal husbandry, as well as one of antimony signifying knowledge of the wilds. There was the plump, red-headed Frenken with his two silver, one brass and one antimony, but also a lead link for diplomacy, three whole black iron links in ravenry, and one pewter link in agriculture, cooking and foraging. His friend Medrick came next, their bond clear from the _four_ links of ravenry he brought with him, plus one in warcraft, one copper link for history, and one link for mathematics and economics made of yellow gold.

After so many before him, Tybald Snow seemed to find his courage. He was a red-haired and round-shouldered man with close-set eyes. It would have been easy to dub him a craven from his manner alone during the short time they were together. Luwin wasn’t so sure though. No small number of lords considered it a good trait in a maester, he knew. But Tybald’s choice of specialties belied it. Three silver for healing, three lead links in diplomacy, one link in mathematics, those were reasonable enough, though healing already demanded a strong stomach. But he also had three brass links for animal husbandry and just as many antimony links in surviving the wild. Didn’t speak so much of cowardice as of preference for beasts, perhaps coupled with a hard-earned, more specific fear of men? Highborn men specifically, maybe. A specific highborn man perhaps?

Assuming Luwin wasn’t just overreaching.

Tybald’s knowledge at his young age seemed to intimidate those remaining. Luwin decided he may as well take his turn. Three silver links for healing, three black iron for ravenry, three copper for history, three links in mathematics made of yellow gold, one lead link for diplomacy, one tin for pottery, one electrum link in logistics, one pewter in agriculture, one bronze in astronomy, he even had three zinc links signifying languages. High Valyrian, Old Ghiscari and Old Tongue, learned from Hother. Hesitating, he then placed the valyrian steel link down as well.

Raising his head, he found most everyone else giving him looks ranging from admiring to intimidated. He tried not to feel overly proud, but it was difficult. At five and ten name days of age, that number of links meant he’d learned three links per year without fail. _And_ finished his time as a scribe younger than most others there had been when they came to the Citadel in the first place.

Hother seemingly decided that was as good a time as any to take a break from going back and forth for new orders and otherwise mothering the increasingly daunted younger generation. He sat down and tossed his ring of links next to the growing pile. Two silver healing, three antimony for surviving the wilds, three agriculture links of pewter, three pottery links of tin, three grey steel links for smithing, three grey iron for warcraft, three electrum links for stewardship and logistics and one yellow gold link of mathematics. Luwin once more resented him being denied the red gold link of jewelcraft. Looking closer, Luwin tried to see if – yes. The zinc link was there as well. It was the first one Hother had gotten, ironically. Without studying for it. He already knew both Common and Old tongues when he came to the Citadel at age eight. At least the maesters didn’t deny him that.

“That’s it?” One of Luwin’s few juniors asked. Harmune, it turned out. Disdainfully too. Probably because he’d somehow somewhere found a skin of wine that he’d been drowning his sorrows in all the while. So much for Hother denying him and the rest of his young age-mates the right to order any spirits worth a damn from the bar. Courage in a flask, Luwin thought drily. “Aren’t you, like, dirt-old?”

“Older than any two of you together, you mean?” Hother finished for him, snatching the lad’s wineskin away. “Think you’re clever, aye? You’ve had enough today. This is mine till tomorrow.”

“No! Gimme that! S’mine!

“No. You’re dumb enough without it. And to answer your question, I’ve been busy.”

“You bastard!”

“My pa’s a randy cunt but my momma’s an honest woman, I’ll have you know.”

“Busy how?” One of the others asked. Lomys, Luwin thought. The spindly, wispy-haired Reachman. Luwin honestly hoped he toughened fast on the road because he was already worried about his weak constitution. “You could forge your chain right now with all that… I thought…”

“That I’d be a full maester by now?” Hother scoffed. “Better shit to do. Copying books on my own coin and time and sending them home, you follow? Kinda pointless now with all the boatloads setting off, but what can you do? ‘Sides, I’ve learned as much as the Citadel let me of what I wanted. Least without becoming one of’em and no way was I gonna make the vows.”

Unfortunately, that admission that he _was_ more than he seemed only served to leave the four boys even more intimidated.

Fortunately, Ryben, who’d been wallowing over having missed the whole episode involving Lord Stark and their distinguished ‘friend’ the Prince of Dorne, deigned to emerge from his slump enough to break the ice again. “I’ll fall on my sword, sure. Why not?” He put down two links of silver, three in history and six links made of zinc, each for one different language. Very few for someone older than Luwin’s age, but more in his specialty than anyone else there. Fitting for the Citadel’s foremost expert on banned, forbidden, fraudulent, and obscene texts. “High Valyrian, Old Ghiscari, Dothraki, Summer Tongue, Rhoynar,” Ryben said blandly. “Even Old Tongue, thanks to the brute over there.”

“And not a day goes by when I don’t regret it,” Umber groused.

Luwin shook his head at the two of them. Ryben never failed to deliver his most prurient gossip. He failed ever more rarely to supply it in Old Tongue when Hother was there. Conversely, Hother never failed to mock him for his grammar and accent being still atrocious compared to little boys of eight name days.

The spectacle did its job at least. For someone of age with Mullin, Ryben had very few links indeed. It finally coaxed compliance out of the last four boys there, none of them older than four and ten. Hother proved to have perfect timing and plied them with warm cups of tea fresh of the stove at precisely the right time. All the while Mullin, sat between them like he was their only pillar of strength.

They boys would be pissing for hours when all the drink caught up to them, but they served their end.

Harmune sullenly showed off his lone antimony link for survivalism and the two silver links they’d all expected. Lomys turned out to have two healing links of his own, one ravenry, one mathematics link in gold, and even one of electrum in logistics. It was Wendamyr _Pike,_ though (a bastard son of Lord Harlaw of the Iron Islands!) that could well turn out to be one of the most important of them all: besides the two silver links as healer, he had two blue steel links in seamanship. Which, in Citadel terms, meant less navigation and more the design and construction of watercraft. The lad also came with one link in warcraft and had been well on the way to getting his first black steel in engineering as well when the Great Deratting hit.

“Why are you even here?” Harmune asked sullenly. Suspicious too, but mostly sullen. “You could go back home with your blue steel alone.”

“Because my old man was gonna kill me,” Wendamyr flatly said, shutting him up quite nicely. “Never was much for finger dance, see? Big shame for the Lord of Harlaw to have such a coward grown out of his seed, if you follow me. Gave my mama to the drowned men, he did. Turns out what’s dead just stays dead most of the time. My trueborn brother’s the one who got me outta there. Joke’s on the old cunt, though. Rodrik likes reading even more than I do.”

Doubtlessly it was more complex than that, but everything was. “And then you got tangled with the grey rats,” Luwin guessed.

“Unfortunately.”

At the end, only young Rhodry was left. He had three links of silver and nothing else. The scrutinising stares he received were not borne with any sort of grace. The boy seemed on the verge of bursting into tears of humiliation before anyone even said anything. As if it was a small thing to be able to brew poisons, make medicines and sew people back together when you were just… “Rhodry, how old are you?”

“… Two and ten.”

What? How early did he get his growth spurt? That was too young, too young by far! Did he not have anyone-?

“How long’ve you been at the citadel,” Ryben asked before Luwin could, prompting a sharp look from Hother and Mullin both.

“Six name days.”

Far too young, but that made six years for just three links? Something smelled ripe, and not in a good way. “Rhodry,” Luwin said slowly as his thoughts sought the puzzle pieces missing from his mind. “When did you become an acolyte?”

“… This year.”

That was an even bigger puzzle piece than he expected. Except it didn’t fit anywhere at all. “When exactly?”

“… Eight moonturns ago? Nine?”

“You mean to tell me…” Luwin said flatly. “That you stayed a novice for five years and change?”

“I guess…”

“You mean to tell me,” Luwin pushed, unimpressed with his shameful tone. “That you then somehow earned three links in less than a year?”

The lad seemed to shrink on himself, as if he weren’t already. “I’d already been learning on my own time?”

“Except that only _acolytes_ treat novices like they’re lackwits, not the maesters. And you couldn’t have gotten far with just the open lectures. Healing requires -“

“Luwin,” Mullin said suddenly, looking at him pointedly. “Methinks you’re sounding upset he went one better.”

Did the man just imply Luwin was feeling inferior to that small child? Luwin paused at the uncharacteristic behaviour. Mullin didn’t tease often. Actually, Luwin barely remembered him teasing anyone ever, unless it was to distract them from-

His mental puzzle suddenly found the unexpected piece slotting in far too easily. Looking over Rhodry more carefully, it occurred to Luwin that he sat closest to Mullin but far from the next man over. In fact, now that he thought about it, he’d stuck to the man closest all that time but always farthest apart from everyone else. Maybe not a self-centered cheat before his first shorthair, then. But if not that, then what?

“Right,” he said, hoping he wasn’t giving anything away. “My apologies, young one. I got a little carried away there.”

“… You’re not much older than me but whatever.”

Their table fell under an odd, not entirely comfortable silence as people stopped just that tiny bit short of the point where they dared make small talk.

Luwin preferred it. He had a lot to think about. A boy of two and ten with voice barely half-way broken had learned three links in one of the most demanding subjects in less time than Luwin managed when he was at his best. Yet, somehow, that talent hadn’t emerged for over five years leading up to it. Even accounting for the year it might have taken the boy to learn his letters in Scribe’s Hearth, that left five years just gone to waste. What had he been doing all that time?

Or, perhaps, what had been done _to_ him that he was held back for so long?

Bullying perhaps? Somehow, he didn’t think so.

It was only later that day while they were getting ready to leave that he caught Mullin alone and discreetly inquired further on the situation. The answer left him feeling sick.

“Be glad you already knew your letters when you arrived,” Mullin said lowly once he concluded his sordid explanation. “Kid only got set loose when his growth spurt came in and his voice broke. Fuckers lost interest after that. Or that’s what I’m letting the kid think. He would’ve turned up dead in a ditch long before this if that were it. I figure he’s pretty enough that the good maester at the Scribe’s Hearth might’ve put the word out with the wrong people in advance. Or they were planning to send him back to the septons that raised him to it, once he was old enough for different tastes. Who the fuck even knows what deals are made in the mansions of the pious?”

Holy fuck. “You mean-“

“Yes.”

“The maester-

“Not in the rats.”

“Fuck.”

“Lord Stark put a word with Ser Baelor Hightower the day before yesterday, but who knows if anything comes of it?”

Would anything come of it at all? “How do you know all this?” Luwin weakly asked when he had no other words left.

“Found the kid in an alley. Right mess of fright he was. Got him away just before the Hightower patrol passed by. Kid was finally starting to understand how messed up his life was. Thought the purge was because of the ones who’d done all that to him. He didn’t take it well when I told him what was really going on. That’s when the whole story came spilling out.”

They left Oldtown within a turn of the hourglass that same New Year’s Day, well before the first garlands and streamers timidly rose into the air. Either the people of Oldtown were too afraid to celebrate anything while the Stark was there, or the Hightowers had stomped on any plans for such until the northmen left. That Baelor Hightower personally escorted their party out of the city – lacking his eponymous ‘brightsmile’ the whole way – made Luwin lean towards the second possibility.

New Year’s Day. Luwin had completely forgotten about it. And by the time he was reminded, he just didn’t care. His mind was too occupied with thoughts of maesters, septons and mass purges.

He’d thought it had gone too far. Now he was seriously wondering if maybe it hadn’t gone far enough.


	20. All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (IV)

## “-. 274 AC .-“

Damn every last tree root in the world! Could he not go more than two slopes without stumbling over one like a drunk simpleton forever doomed to crash arse-over-teakettle in the mud?

“Alright down there, boy?” The greybeard asked with the well-worn tone of an elder well used to herding the clumsy spawn of everyone else’s even clumsier spawn.

Luwin felt the burn of humiliation wash over his face. Whoever decided those damned board shoes could be used year-round should be flogged and hanged. It was hard enough to ride the things in the snow, but skiing over detritus? Through a forest? In _summer_? Madness!

He angrily kicked off his skis. When that didn’t work, he set about stumbling to his feet with an even hotter feeling of humiliation. The little grey eyes laughed at him from where they bounced around the man’s feet in his shadow.

“Careful now,” the man was suddenly there, yanking him away from the nearby stream that the sun shone out of. “What’d I tell you? Stay out of the red light.”

They resumed their trek, but the only reason Luwin didn’t crash into more shrubs and trees was because he merely lumbered all the way to the bottom of the wooded hill, pushing his sticks deep into the ground with every step. The little grey eyes laughed at him childishly the whole while, flitting from shade to shadow every time he looked away.

Of course, then came another hill to climb and descend from and everything started again.

“Spread the tips of your feet a bit more,” Marwyn the Mage said from where he followed their guide right next to him. “Now push off – that’s right. Left, right, left, right, good. Feel the difference in the arms?”

“Some,” Luwin huffed. The end of the hill couldn’t come fast enough. “Not as much as you, I’m sure.”

“Just a bit more practice and you’ll be flying across the highlands.”

“You mean a lot of practice.”

“Hardly. A couple hours and you have the basics down.”

“Not all of us are freaks of nature that can pick up a skill after seeing it once.”

“And you think I can? Who do I look like, Mullin?”

Well he’d certainly played out his part word for word, of that conversation Luwin had with the other acolyte when they left Oldtown. It felt like a lifetime ago, now. Luwin huffed.

Marwyn glanced at him knowingly, as if he knew what had just gone through his mind. Disgustingly amused at his expense too. Luwin couldn’t even guess why. The Mage had been looking at him that way since he first faceplanted in the leaves. Whatever happened to his grunting cantankerousness? He was never this cheerful!

“I’m starting to wish we’d left by ship,” Luwin grumbled. It only drew another bout of childish laughter from the little grey eyes. It tinkled from one weirwood leaf to the next as unseen paws skittered over the pool of black water.

A strange canter reached their ears then, buoyed by the sound of some whimsical whistling that-

“Everyone hide!” their guide hissed suddenly, literally tackling Luwin into a butterfly bush.

Luwin tried to balk. The greybeard roughly covered his mouth with a hand. Luwin froze. The childish eyes landed near his head and closed, disappearing without a trace. Marwyn appeared on his left, kneeling to hide as told.

Then they all lied still and watched through green leaves and purple flowers as [a girl rode by on a white pony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIF9KRBbAWU), no by your leave, no nothing. Young. Spry. Cheerful as a bird. She hummed as thunk and clank and clatter went the shoeless hooves upon the forest floor. Then she disappeared amidst the trees as fast as she’d appeared, taking her pride and joy and the whistling of some unseen voice with her.

“For Builder’s sake, again!?” the greybeard groaned as he climbed off of Luwin. “Guess this is where I do a runner. Good luck you two. I swear, when I find her minders…”

Luwin watched blankly as the greybeard hurried off after the girl, muttering threats and promises of doom all the while. A great shadow passed over them in his wake, flying after the man. Luwin couldn’t distinguish much through the thick canopy, but he knew a hawk’s cry when he heard it, even if he’d never heard one so loud. Or long. 

“Tell me, Luwin,” Marwyn said. “Do you remember how you got here?”

“What?”

The childish eyes were suddenly in his face.

“GAH!”

Luwin gasped, slipped backwards and toppled up into the water.

He flailed and sputtered and drowned without drowning, then a familiar enormous hand grabbed him by the arm and dragged him onto solid ground again. He coughed, flailed and spluttered the whole way, then fell when the grip loosed. He kissed the dirt. Or would’ve, but winter had returned. The snow felt coarse against his face. Coarse and freezing after the warm pool. He rolled to his back, gasping for breath through a raw throat. Snowy pines filled his sight. The branches of fir trees mixed with red leaves shaped like hands. They hung off boughs white as bone even where snow didn’t reach. Above and beyond them all, the sky. It wasn’t green as grass anymore, somehow. It was a pale, greying thing now, thick with milky fog and the largest snowflakes he’d ever seen falling from the dreary clouds beyond. They looked like silver stars falling through gaps in an old, worn net growing more tattered and threadbare with every day that went by.

Luwin thought a day might come when he could hate all laughter. He turned his head aside to glare at the damned anklebiter. The eyes. They looked human. Grey. But also blue, now that he thought about it. They glowed like ice where white should be. Or was it a trick of the light?

Heavy footstomps next to his head made him turn the other way.

“Still here? I’m impressed. Usually the first time jolts the heart all a fret.”

Marwyn looked different. Luwin didn’t know how he only now noticed it. The man was still short and squat, but it didn’t seem unnatural now. The bulk packed into his chest and shoulders and even his hard ale-belly somehow complemented it, perfectly filling out the heavy plate he now wore. A segmented armor made of some dark, smoky metal. There was not a spot below the man’s chin that wasn’t covered in at least an inch of the heavy material. Pauldrons, brassarts, vambraces, gauntlets, cuirass, even a long, segmented kilt in place of faulds that reached all the way to just below the knee guards of the greaves. Overlaying it was a vast cape made from the fur of some great beast. And… And his _hair_. Forget the bristly white sprouting from his ears and nostrils. They were just props for a veritably opulent mane. Wiry bristles framed his face all the way to the ears. Tufted eyebrows sailed up into the air like white ash from a pyre. Bushy whiskers capped with steel stuck up like boar tusks. They all mixed into a coat of white, like salt crushed and dusted over a full beard and head of hair that almost reached his belt, coarse and thick and kissed by fire like a beacon in full spate.

Luwin stared up at the man, astounded. “You’re Ibbenese!”

Marwyn looked down at him like he was mad.

Immediately, Luwin felt foolish. That was hardly the most memorable thing. There was a shroud around the Mage too, dark where he was bright and red as blood. It smelled like embers amidst smoke of salted pork fresh off the fire.

“Maybe not as lucid as I thought.” The Mage scratched his chin. His hand passed through his fiery beard as if it wasn’t there. “It’s far too early for you to be projecting your delusions unto others, lad. Ibbenese indeed!” Shaking his head, the man stomped off.

Luwin climbed to his feet and stared at the man, gaping. Mad? Him!? Change the color of his hair darker and he looked just like one! How had no one seen it before? The height. Those enormous hands. The heavy, broad-shouldered, broad-chested stature. That beetle-browed face with shadowed eyes and massive jaw. Great square teeth. The grunting, rasping manner of his speech. By the Gods, even his veins seemed to spring out of his skin here and there, like water trails in a ship’s wake. And those scars. Two scar tattoos etched in his skin. They criss-crossed over his sloping brow from eye to temple, looking almost like birthmarks midst those heavy ridges.

“Don’t dawdle, boy!”

Luwin stumbled after the man as well as he could. The snow seemed to grow ever thinner the further up the mountains they went until they had to give up the skis and snow shoes entirely. It only made the forest floor more treacherous the farther on they climbed though. Black ice worked against his footing when it wasn’t rocks making a bid at the same, dark as night and oily. There was never a plant or critter to be seen near them, even where the ground was bare as spring. Ahead of him, Marwyn walked without leaving any more sign of his passage than the green light trickling up through the cracks in the mountainside. Luwin tried not to gawk at him. Tried not to resent him either. He did his best to ignore the mirthful eyes pouncing around them too. They left no paw prints and then abruptly shot ahead of them both and closed and disappeared just like they’d-

Marwyn the Mage suddenly leap back and landed where Luwin was about to step, one arm held out protectively. The world caught flame at the edges. Spinning. Tilted too, somehow. It blurred the corners of his eyes like see-through, blue-white rims of a shining trapezohedron.

What could have startled the Mage so?

Looking ahead, Luwin saw Death. An unlined outline cut into the shape of a hooded cloak made of one and one thousand eyes of blue and white fire. In front of it, a man. And a bear. Old. Tired. Starving. Bloody, the both of them. Fighting. Wrestling with the last of their strength in the snow at the mouth of a cave. Then the man seemed to summon some mighty burst of strength. Hauled himself forward by the broken spear shaft sticking out of the bear’s chest. Jumped on its back. Locked his brawny arms around its head before viciously snapping its neck with a loud, savage cry of pain and exultation.

They collapsed together. For a moment, Luwin thought they both were dead. The man crawled away though. Dragged himself by his chin, then with his hands, then he staggered to his feet. Drunkenly, almost. Clutching an arm around his midriff. He’d been disembowelled, Luwin marvelled, yet still he wanted to die on his feet. And he did. Limped, staggered and stumbled away from his kill while reaching out blindly but didn’t fall again. Not until Death reached out as well and took his hand in its own.

The body fell in a pool of its own guts. Its blood streamed forth like springmelt, red and fiery upon the steaming snow. The man himself stood easy, though. Straight. Solid, almost, like the mountain it had ruled his whole life. Hither came the Magnar. Hither came the Flint, grey-haired, long-bearded and jolly-eyed. A man, a hunter, a lord of the mountain with towering melancholies and towering mirth, to tread the sparkling snow under his booted feet. Hither he came. Walked one step after another, then fell to his knees and looked up at Death reverently, both hands latched onto its own. The hands of a warrior and hunter and father they were, strong and rough but gentle as they grasped the other, small and black as midnight.

Death overlayed him entire, somehow, that his blind grasping need be blind no more. The two thought together then. For a lifetime between one moment and the next. Of sense and reason and knowledge dreamed into the world from beyond the stars and everything the man did throughout his life that meant something. It was enough to enlighten even the poorest lackwit that never saw full age, but barely any of it found a point of purchase. The Flint was a gladsome but perceptive greybeard. What care did he have for wondrous crafts he’d never wield? Great works he’d never see? What did he know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft, the lie? Him who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky? The silver tongue, the trickster’s guile, they failed when the axe swings. Let kings and merchants dream about grand crafts and kingdoms. Let maesters and mages brood over questions of magic and reason. He’d lived, he’d loved, he’d known the bliss of warm arms, he’d raised his daughters and sons, he’d slain foes and beasts alike. Made a good show of his last hunt, even. He’d led his clan and left them better off then they’d been when he was young. Hadn’t he done well?

He had, Luwin knew with all the certainty of the dream. He was a worthy lord and father and kin to kings.

Death agreed with him. That was why it was here to greet him after all. It would even bring him before the face of his gods if he wanted, but wasn’t there anything he wished he’d done before all that?

The Flint laughed boisterously and kissed the hand of Death, then crawled forward on his knees to embrace it. His trunk-like arms disappeared beneath the cloak of fire while his face nestled near its heart like a child. Or a lover. A father even. A nuncle clinging to the goodson that taught his boys their letters but whom he’d never got to meet. He didn’t regret it anymore that he did the rest of his life though. If he longed for anything, he would that he had died in summer. He would’ve liked to enjoy life longer. He would’ve loved to fly.

Death returned the embrace and its garb unravelled around them. The great cloak of feathers unwove itself. The eyes unbraided from runes to flares and then floating fires scattering like stars at midnight. The black sky melted down through the clouds above them, then lower until it seeped all the way through the branches. The speckled void overlayed the boughs. The eyes and stars interposed where the leaves once were. And as the night sky swallowed them all, the ground seemed to fall away and they passed up through the firmament on the wings of some grand, [mighty music](https://www.bitchute.com/video/KNqXjEDmUEgh/) played by voices and instruments that were out of this world.

Abruptly, Marwyn whirled around, grabbed Luwin around the midriff and literally crashed them out of the spell, down through the firmament and back into the world from whence they’d flown away. The starry void burned out of his sight as they fell, hot and fiery and stretching behind them like a red star’s trail.

Luwin crashed awake with a gasp. Back among the living. Back in the Mage’s hut of snow that the Stark’s guards had raised around the second widest stump of Weirwood at High Heart. The glass candle was still there in the middle of it. Luwin looked at it in a daze. He didn’t even think before he focused back on it. He wanted to go back there. Back to where he was going before Marwyn had… why would Marwyn do that? There was no harm done. The sky… The firmament was so wondrous. So beautiful and vast. So wonderful and full of knowledge he had never even thought to grasp. No more than the old chieftain had. He could see the Flint even now, drinking rapturously from whatever was that revelation, growing more than he was with each star that passed until he shed himself of himself entirely.

Luwin watched, awestruck, as a simple mortal man left his soul behind like he’d done his body before that. Shot upwards into some new life, past stars and moons and planets like a star unto himself. Suns adrift, suns in cages, suns and moons made of bright fruit. And everywhere… worlds. Small and large, barren and alive with small men and big men and cat men and talking lizards and a shining prince with golden hair that bestrode a world all his own while waging a one-shovel war against encroaching baobabs and was looking curiously right at him-

Marwyn cursed, yanked him away from where he’d crawled forward and jumped between him and the candle, breaking his line of sight.

The last thing Luwin glimpsed before the flame went out was Death raising up the soul left behind, bright and endlessly colorful and mighty.

Then there was only Marwyn the Mage barely outlined against the darkness as he stood there with his back turned, glaring in the spot where the glass candle had once burned.

“A pox on every highborn who ever thought they had a thought worth the hot air in their empty skulls! To think I’d gotten my hopes up after the grey rats! Here I am wondering about sorcerers and R’hlorrists and warlocks and the Black Goat fuckers and every other cult in the world that the North might have taken in, but no! They somehow do one better! And I’m sure Stark will make a solemn affair of this whole ‘meeting’ and how our pact is settled and I’m free to go on my way if I wish! Even though I’m the one who demanded a meet with his pet sorcerer in the first place! Why I oughta… Bah!” Marwyn’s faint outline looked terrifying in the darkness, like a rabid dog slavering at the mouth. Somehow though, Luwin didn’t have it in him to feel afraid. Or feel much of anything. The mage then turned and Luwin didn’t need to see his face to know he wore a glare. “And you! What the hell were you thinking, child!?”

Oh, he was talking to him now? Luwin’s thoughts skittered over his brain, like spiders. “Death was rather short for Death, wasn’t it?”

Wait, that hadn’t come out right.

“Bugger this on an Other’s icy prick.” Marwyn turned, tossed some firewood into the hearth along with a splash of his belly-melting firewater. The flame roared to life, casting the snow hut and the angry face of its owner into stark relief. The Mage then sat on the edge of the weirwood stump and went about checking Luwin’s health like he had back in Oldtown, twice as angry but no less careful.

Still addled by everything he’d undergone, Luwin blurted out the next thing that came to mind. “Was that a Child of the Forest?”

“Because height surely counts most in a magic vision, clearly,” Marwyn sneered derisively. “Why should the starry void of the long night matter? Tell me what all you remember. Don’t try to find a beginning, just talk about what stood out most and go from there.”

Luwin ended up starting from the beginning anyway. Not that his undignified bath in that black pool was the beginning, but it was _a_ beginning. When he reached the end, though, and told Marwyn about the last glimpses of the other side before he cut the flame off, Luwin stopped. He thought he’d get assailed with questions. Maybe scolded some more. Marwyn didn’t do that though. Instead, the Mage served him a bowl of baked walnuts and a cup of sage, peppermint, basil and rosemary tea right off the fire. They cleared his mind and lit his insides with the warmth of home and hearth. Softened the longing he still felt for the stars. Not all, but some.

Didn’t really help him recall the earlier dream any better though. Which he wasn’t all that broken up over, truth be told. Bad enough he was barely competent on those skis in the waking world, he didn’t exactly relish dreaming about doing even worse. The rest, though… The greybeard with his hammer leading them around. The forest and its marvellous lights, and the red that streamed upwards from pits and waters. The green sky high above the clouds, like moss and grass set in the heavens. Luwin had no idea what to make of any of them. Then there was that little anklebiter that lured them down through the roots into the green to begin with, only to play tricks on him. Pounced unseen and laughed the whole time until they fell back out through the pool of black water.

Come to think of it, that one-eyed raven from back at the Citadel had been watching from the background too, once they passed into winter again.

When Luwin finished, Marwyn watched him for a time, not saying anything. The flickering flames cast half his face in shadow and the other as if alight with its own fire. The Mage looked like a fell spirit as he sat there. A king come forth straight from some barrow or cave far away. A god upon his throne, even, judging him from his hall of ice and stone and wood as white as bone.

“Was that really Death?” Luwin asked. He didn’t know what else to do.

“You think that’s what you saw?” Marwyn growled, spitting to the side. The glob of phlegm was smaller than usual and more pink than red. The pall upon them broke and Marwyn looked like his usual, uncouth, dangerous mortal self once more. “The only clean death I saw was of the bear, but how can you know it was real? Or are you asking about that creature? You don’t think it could have been a man? Or a woman? You dream whatever you fancy, would you have me think you never dreamed of playing god? And if it really was some god, what then? What if I told you it was the Stranger? R’hlorr the Red? The Black Goat of Qohor maybe? Do you want me to decide for you which gods are real? You follow the Old Gods of Many Faces, would you have me think they suddenly ring false to you because of one strange dream? A man’s gods are his own business.”

 _Not according to the Faith of the Seven and every other cult you just named_. Though feeling chastised, Luwin nonetheless couldn’t contain himself. “That was nothing like any dream.”

“Nothing like any of _yours_ , perhaps, but how do you know it was yours at all? You didn’t work any of this magic, how do you know whose dream it was? What if it was mine? The greybeard’s? What about that little pup that aggrieved you so much?

Luwin didn’t know. “Was it?”

“Maybe it was neither. Maybe it was all of them. Maybe we passed through all their dreams at different points. Say we saw the dying dream of that old clan chief, whose dream did we pass through to get there? What does it say when a childlike spirit leads you to watch a soul being harvested by whatever that was, laughing all the way? Maybe we should tie jingling bells to our coffins and get it over with, hmm? Or maybe the whole thing was dreamed up by whoever lit the candle from halfway across the world and we saw only what he made us see, did you think of that?”

He hadn’t. He wasn’t thinking about a lot of things, it seemed.

Marwyn hauled himself off the stump, went to his pack and pulled out a leather-bound tome which he held out for Luwin to take. “Go sit and stop thinking about any of it for a while. _After_ that, write down everything you remember. _Only_ what you remember. Don’t try to guess. Don’t try to wonder. Don’t interpret anything. And for the sake of all the Gods and Others, don’t speak to anyone of _anything_ you saw and heard today.”

“… Alright?” What was he going to do, say no?

“Sorcerers, warlocks, shadowbinders, they’d all demand your sworn vow, Luwin,” Marwyn said, voice dark and sharp as salt on a wound. “They’d use their arts to enforce their will once you submitted yours. They’d feel it their right to exact price in blood and will and life if you then broke it. I don’t make a habit of such demands, but I hope you’ll heed the gravity of my words regardless. Now let’s get you back to the others. The camp will be abed soon and you could use some normal dreams, I reckon.”

Marwyn ushered him out, walked with him part of the way through the camp until he could find the rest of the way by himself, then stomped off to find Lord Stark.

The first thing Luwin saw once past the neatly arranged snow huts of the Winterfell guards was Lomys lying in the snow. He waved but didn’t otherwise move. Waiting to either stop feeling pain or to start shivering, Luwin knew. That was well ahead from where he himself was in Lord Stark’s honing regimen. Luwin still couldn’t believe it but the Reachman had somehow honed himself faster than all of them. So much for his weak constitution! Well, except Mullin but he was a freak of nature. He’d learned skiing in one hour, was bathing naked in the snow by the third day, started swimming in ice-cold rivers and lakes by the end of the first sennight of travel, and now he’d taken to sparring against all of Lord Stark’s retinue every time they stopped somewhere. In fact, he was doing that right now. Seemed to have gone from beating a third to just over half of them in a row, now. At their own weapons. They were none of them greenhorns either. Little wonder Rhodry was staring at him with stars in his eyes from the side.

For his part, Luwin was more surprised they were out in that blizzard. It wasn’t the worst blizzard they’d travelled through, certainly nothing on the one that prevented them from moving on the previous day. But it was still bad enough to bite the skin and make Luwin glad they hadn’t left by ship. Winter storms were _not_ good places to be.

Despite knowing well the reason for their haste, though, Luwin was privately glad for the delay. Their way of travel didn’t agree with him. They weren’t traveling on horses but in carriage houses pulled by dogs. Well, some of them were. Even with three sledhouses and all the guards on skis, they only barely managed to all fit in the beginning, and only because they slept in shifts _and_ a third or so of Luwin’s fellow acolytes had already learned to ski by the time Marwyn rescued him. Luwin had only ever read of wildlings using such things, and they were just normal sleds pulled along by hounds in crude harnesses. Most of his misgivings about them dissipated early on, admittedly, when he realized they were making better time than a horse in midsummer. He still wished for a spot of rest or at least a horse to doze on from time to time, though, instead of spending more time on those skis than anywhere else. But Lord Stark had commanded them all to learn their use swiftly, then made them switch between sledhouse and ski travel as they sped northward, sometimes without a single stop for days save however little it took to eat rations while the dogs napped and fed.

Skis. For all that he was among the worst at riding them, they were clever contraptions, Luwin had to admit. Made him wonder why no one had come up with them previously. Even the bear paws they used on their stops weren’t really bear paws as he remembered them. A man might actually be able to work and even fight in them. The tracks in the beaten snow at the center of camp certainly looked as if a lot of sparring had been done with them on very recently.

Alas, for all that they’d made good time through the Reach, the winter weather grew worse the further up the Riverlands they went, until the mother of all Blizzards caught up to them just after Acorn Hall. Which they had bypassed entirely, like Honeyholt, Horn Hill, Highgarden itself and every other hold and settlement worth a name. That was how they ended up camping within the circle of thirty weirwood stumps at High Heart, high up on the summit.

Not seeing anyone else about of those he knew, Luwin made for the largest communal snow hut that had been erected for him and the other acolytes.

Snow huts. Everyone with more than air in their head knew about snow protecting crops and plants between fall and spring. Despite that, though, it had never before occurred to him what that might be turned towards. But now, after resting half a dozen times in a huddle of bodies half again as spacious as all sledhouses put together, Luwin was starting to wonder what other old idea might serve being put to new use.

Snow houses probably wouldn’t make the best long-term dwellings. Anything resembling a permanent outposts would need to be made out of something lasting like stone or wood, perhaps on stilts like a fire lookout tower to keep it out of the snow? The huts were very good for travel and emergencies, however, and Luwin wouldn’t be surprised if moving villages started cropping up during winter times. ‘Permanent’ camps and fisheries moving ever onward as snow huts were built and rebuilt in the wake of hunting trails and fishing spots. There certainly seemed variations to the design, based on its purpose and the weather at time of making.

Luwin inspected the construction as he approached. The access tunnel was smaller and deeper into the snow than usual, but having to crawl for a few meters was a small price to pay for being protected from the gale. Opposite from the entrance, there was an actual smokeshaft, from where smoke raggedly sputtered before being dispersed by the heavy wind. It still amazed him that fire could blaze so merrily in a hearth of ice, even now. No that the hut actually needed it. Even that first night, by the time Frenken girded his loins and lit a fire on account of being the closest, the air had grown to be damn near toasty by Luwin’s standards. Despite being built large enough for them all to sit in a circle around their dinner pot, the hut had grown warm enough to lounge around in from their body heat alone. The only issue with the huts had been that Hother couldn’t stand upright, unless he was right in the middle. But a cursory glance indicated that wouldn’t be an issue this time.

He stopped at the mouth of the tunnel door and hesitated. He didn’t feel ready to sleep just yet.

He decided to walk the rest of the way to the edge of the camp and sit downwind from the weirwood stump farthest out, taking advantage of the break in the wind to gaze out into the distance. Even with the gale and blizzard, High Heart was a place beholden with surprising visibility. He took to practicing the breathing Lord Stark had taught them that first time.

 _“Your tolerance of the cold is beyond atrocious and will serve you worse and worse the farther north we get,”_ Lord Stark had told them as he stood before them clad in trousers and nothing else. His head, his arms, his chest and back, even his feet were bare. _“You will join my men in their daily conditioning. Follow my and their instructions and you will be swimming in frozen streams by the time we reach Winterfell.”_

It had sounded like a mad fancy but no one dared contradict him. Time stood him witness in good stead soon enough too. Luwin would have taken up the first half of the routine regardless though. The breathing they were taught made him feel tingly all over from toe to head. He always felt incredibly relaxed afterwards as well. It was that calm and ease of mind and body both that he craved now. If it took him falling as deathly still as the husk of High heart around him, he’d do it. He’d do it and do it again until he found that core of warmth in his chest and behind his eyes that the stars always called and the glass candle kindled.

High Heart. A hill so lofty that from atop it Luwin felt as though he could see half the world. Around its brow stood a ring of huge pale stumps, all that remained of a circle of once-mighty weirwoods. Luwin’s time hadn’t been his own for most of the past two days, but he’d still gotten around to counting them all. There were thirty-one, some so wide that a child could have used them for a bed.

High Heart had been sacred to the children of the forest, guardsman Tom had told them, and some of their magic lingered here still. “No harm can ever come to those as sleep here,” he’d said for the benefit of Rhodry and Wendamyr and the others among them without history links who didn’t already know. Luwin didn’t doubt the claim. The hill was so high and the surrounding lands so flat that no enemy could approach unseen.

The other thing Tom had told them about the place didn’t turn out to be quite as true. The smallfolk hereabouts supposedly shunned the place. It was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the children of the forest who had died here when the Andal king named Erreg the Kinslayer had cut down their grove. Luwin knew about the children of the forest, and about the Andals of course, but if there was anything to this talk of ghosts, it must have taken a holiday. He’d stopped counting all the smallfolk that came up to request an audience with Lord Rickard after the first dozen., and that had been yesterday.

The memory mingled in his mind’s eye with others of similar bent, of reachmen or rivermen gathered in numbers to petition the Lord Warden of the North each time he called a stop. Not their own lords or high lords, but the ruler of a different kingdom entirely. Luwin and the rest had been wary of inquiring into what might have been kingly business, or the next thing over. Fortunately, Hother was there to tell them when they were being idiots and explained. It turned out that Rickard Stark was making stops in the exact same places he’d stopped on the way south. Places several days or more removed from their lords’ holds. Modest places but well travelled. Inns where he dined and drank and talked with the smallfolk. Hamlets where he’d spread word of good work and pay for any people of the Old Way who had the grit to uproot themselves and head on North come spring.

By now Luwin had stopped breathing entirely, which was the only reason his ears picked up the traipsing of feet upon the snow. He opened his eyes and looked towards the source. There was a small pale shape creeping between the huts, thin white hair flying wild as she leaned upon a gnarled cane. The woman could not have been more than three feet tall. The guards gave her long glances from suspicious to unnerved, but didn’t send her away. Their torchlight made her eyes gleam as red as blood in the twilight. She looked like a ghost as she approached him.

The dwarf woman sat down next to him uninvited. She squinted at him with eyes like hot coals. “I’ve dreamed of you, blind seer. You and many things besides. Would you like to know what?”

Luwin stared at the dwarf woman, forgetting to breathe. Of course, that wasn’t so great a feat these days. The first few times under Lord Stark’s direction cured him nicely of his amazement over how long he could go without pulling in air. Knowing what was waiting for him was motivation like no other to practice as long and as often as possible. He still couldn’t believe he spent his mornings stripping naked. Taking buckets of ice-cold water to the face. Outside. In winter. And then they were just told to bury themselves in the snow and stay there until their skin stopped hurting. Frenken had almost died of frostbite in the beginning, when he tried exposure without enough preparation despite Lord Stark’s commands. One would think his antimony link would’ve stood him in better stead. He refused to participate in the training afterwards and Lord Stark indulged him. But then the cold began to sink into their bones the further North they went. And Lomys, somehow, managed to toughed up faster than all but Hother and Mullin so Frenken came around as well he should when-

“Are you alive in there?’ the dwarf woman asked, knocking him on the head with her gnarled cane. It was made of wood as white as bone. Weirwood, Luwin thought. “Has the chill gotten you? I’ve seen many men freeze in winter. Everyone talks about snows dozens of feet deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than a shadowcat, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don’t have the strength to fight it. It’s easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don’t feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it’s like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful. Like you!”

“… Who are you?” Luwin asked, but still did not breathe in. The tips of his toes and fingers barely tingled.

“Goodness!” the dwarf woman. “You live! Do you make all the ladies wait? Is that what they teach you in those bookish halls, those greyrobes? Or is this how the young court nowadays? Mayhap I can expect a kiss?”

Luwin reared back in disgusted horror.

The little woman cackled at the sight he made. “Aye, a sloppy kiss, a bit of tongue. Ah, but has been too long, too long. Your mouth will taste of mint and mine of bones. I am too old.”

“… A maester is sworn to celibacy.”

“But you’re no maester yet and you'll be a strange sort indeed when you get ‘round to it, won’t you? I’ve dreamed of you, child. I saw you gaze into winter’s mists borne forth by strings made of red fire. I saw you walk beneath warm stars in lockstep with the son of the burned woman and the corpse cutter. I saw the god of whales too, the king that was promised, who learned the truth of his begetting only to kneel and bow his uncrowned head. And I dreamed of a she-wolf with eyes made of flint. She’s deathly sick, but you already know that don’t you? In the hall of wolves the mother lies weak and fevered with her pack scattered to the winds. A starry void is her only company, stretching far around her and seeping deep into the dreams of winter’s court. I can’t see past those stars any more than I can see my own nose, but then again, I’ve not gone all that deep to snoop. Not like you will. I saw you, blind seer. I saw you gaze past fields and mountains and the cage around the pale court’s heart to spy the black wolf’s business. I saw you stare through flame and glass while fire and blood looked over your shoulder. I saw you snoop and I saw you _burn_.”

A shiver trailed down Luwin’s back. It had nothing to do with the cold. A moonturn past he might have called it a mad fancy. Not now. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Which was half a lie. “You need to speak to my master.” Which wasn’t.

“Your master?” the woman scoffed. “That snarling lump? He’s the second I told what I just told. The Ice Wolf paid double for my news and just as well for my dreams, he did. Then paid me more to stick around and share with all the rest of you youngsters. So here I am. Queer man, that Ice Wolf. Handsome too, and that beard! Gold and silver and steel wrapped in silk. Oh, if he weren’t wed and I’d been just nine centuries younger… Oh well, dreams for a younger lass those be. I’ve done what I was bid. You were the last one left, so I’ll be on my way. Unless you’d like to escort little old me on home? What am I saying, you’re not half that gallant, more’s the pity.”

By the gods, was everyone going to moon over Lord Stark’s dashing looks? It was enough to unman a man. And what’s this about living a thousand years? Luwin stared at her. “You’re very strange.”

“You’ll be strange too when you’re as old as me. My hair comes out in handfuls and no one’s kissed me for a thousand years. It’s hard to be so old, yet here I linger, just as the Old Gods linger, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. This place belongs to them still, you know. You should heed that if you come by again. They don’t look kindly on those flames your master likes to gaze into. Or maybe not so much _likes_ , now. They won’t look kindly on whoever lit that fire either, mark my words. The oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists just as well as they remember the Andal brother killer and his axes of cold steel.”

The small woman turned around and left while humming some unknown tune, disappearing down the hill into the blizzard like a ghost. Luwin wondered if perhaps she was mad after all. The nearest settlement wasn’t exactly within spitting distance, this was no weather to be traveling in.

He was still sitting there and gazing out into the blizzard when Hother found him. “What are you thinking!?” The big man scolded him, hauling him off the ground, bundling him up in his own cloak over his and marching him back to their hut. “The breathin’s for when it’s nice and warm, you can’t take no warmth with you if there’s none of it to begin with! You weren’t even doing no exercises either!”

Luwin felt fine but knew better than to protest the man’s fussing. Soon he was inside, sitting next to their fire with Marwyn’s book open in front of him, a pen in one hand and a wooden mug of hot honeyed tea in the other. _Ginger_ tea. It was things like this that made Luwin believe Lord Stark was genuine when he spoke of them as investments. Rather than interlopers he was liable to execute at the merest sign of wrongdoing. Ginger wasn’t exactly the cheapest herb. It wasn’t even the cheapest import even in Oldtown. Assuming that was where he’d bought it rather than bringing it with him from home.

Hother left as soon as Luwin was settled across from Mullin, who was in front of him already spread out on his bedroll, like a wall between the sleeping Rhodry and the rest of their not so little hovel. The boy was doing fairly well in the day-to-day, all things considered, but he still needed a bulwark to get proper rest. Luwin didn’t remark or inquire after him. It had long become clear that his best contribution was to just treat Rhodry with the same probity he used with everyone else outside his former cellmates.

Luwin was starting the second page of his dream testimony when Hother returned with Tybald, their last wayward brother. It wasn’t enough to pull him away from writing though. Not until Harmune went on his nightly spiel of sullen grousing.

“So… when we gonna hear what all tha’ was ‘bout?”

“None of your business,” Tybald muttered as he crawled to his bedroll.

“Comm’on, spill them guts ‘fore I spill mine all o’er yours, huh?”

Harmune was certainly liable to puke all over him. Just what he did for Lord Stark’s guards to keep slipping him wineskins, Luwin couldn’t imagine. He just knew it didn’t matter how many Hother took away.

“I’ll spill that wine down your drawers if you don’t piss off,” Tybald said.

“S’cuse you! We deserve an espl’ation!”

“Since when? It’s got fuck all to do with you.”

“Horseshit. You’va been with them Lordy o’er n’hour.” What’s this now? “You don’t got _near_ as big a sob story ‘s all that!”

“You don’t know shit about my sob story.”

“So you _do_ havva sob story! Knew it!”

“Gods, you really are drunk off your arse. Someone punch him out.”

“M’sorry, Tybald old chum,” Harmune slurred, not sounding sorry at all. “Dunnae mean ter be all ‘nsensitive. ‘S’just you’ve been cryin’ and all, an’ it cannae been cuz Lord Stark went and hugged yer or nuffin, right?”

“Lord Stark gives great hugs, I’ll have you know.”

 _That_ ripped Luwin out of his write-up quite thoroughly, just as he was about to finish the greybeard’s description. Looking across the hut to the younger lad, he saw most of the others no less taken aback than himself. Even Umber was baffled at the claim.

Tybald shrunk under the attention, but didn’t clam up like he’d done every time before. “… He’s very patient.”

Harmune stared at Tybald through bloodshot eyes, blinking slowly. “…Yaknow, Umb’r, mebbe y’ain’t fullo’ shit ‘bout th’ wine,” Harmune mumbled, turning into his bedroll and throwing the wine skin away. Uncapped. Half-full. It splashed over Lomys, Wendamyr and Hother himself, much to general spluttering and the latter’s outraged fussing that the former two seemed less and less resentful of with every day that went by.

Tybald took that opportunity to pull his covers over his head, which left Luwin unable to ask him anything even if he’d been so inclined. Or if he were anywhere closer to the front of the snow hut. And he _was_ so inclined, considering what he’d glimpsed of his face before he bundled himself up. Tybald had looked like he’d just finished crying. But he didn’t seem scared or grief-stricken or anything like it. If anything, he looked relieved.

Turning back to his book, he noticed Mullin was gazing at him in that sideways manner of his. The one that told you he won’t pry but was there if you needed something.

“Go on. Enlighten me.”

“Tybald _Snow_ ,” Mullin said simply. “From a village along the Weeping Water.”

Luwin blinked. All further thoughts of dream chronicles were pushed aside by the familiar feeling of his mind latching onto a new puzzle. He hadn’t thought anything of it before. Lord Stark had summoned all of them for private meetings at some point or another. Luwin’s own had been particularly arduous, especially once Lord Rickard began asking about maesters and archmaesters and teachings and their names. Still, he hadn’t dwelled much on it after. Its purpose was obvious, and the toil was nothing compared to some of his tests and lessons. Like those three months earning his third silver, which started with him getting used to tasting piss every day and didn’t get any better from there. Not that he’d ever liken a meeting with Lord Stark to tasting piss of course. This latest discovery though… “Commonners don’t usually have surnames. Just like most small settlements and villages don’t have names.” Luwin sent a long glance in the acolyte-shaped lump of bedding. “Tybald _Snow_. From an unnamed village along the Weeping Water.”

Mullin grunted and finally pulled up his own covers, settling in for the night. “A bastard is always a powerful piece.”

The knowledge was too fresh to ruminate on, so Luwin took the chance to finish his writing while he waited for the pieces to assemble in the proper pattern at the back of his mind. It was some time before he was done, but Hother stayed up until he turned in as usual, reading by candlelight to give the polite fiction that he wasn’t just being a mother hen as normal.

Tybald Snow. A bastard highborn enough to merit the surname. From the Weeping Water. Luwin doubted it served to wonder about how the meeting may have gone. He supposed it wasn’t impossible that Lord Stark might be looking for a puppet heir to fill a certain vacancy that may or may not be open in that region. Knowing Tybald, though, he doubted it. There was no way someone like him would feel relief at such a news. He was timid and skittish and his face had been nowhere near scared or grief-stricken or anything like it. He really _had_ just looked relieved.

Ah well Luwin thought. It had nothing to do with him really.

He settled into his bedroll to rest. He slept deep that night. He didn’t dream.

They next day, the weather had cleared and their party departed as soon as fast was broken and Lord Stark spoke with some of the last petitioners. Luwin barely had enough time to eat and return the tome to Marwyn before they were off. Lord Stark seemed determined to make up for lost time, which led to a reprise of their first few days out of Oldtown. They skied and rode through the entire first day and then most of the night, taking advantage of the winter visibility. The moonlight reflected brightly off the snow to paint even the dark night white. They stopped only for however long it took to eat rations and let the dogs recover their strength before pushing on. Those of them with weaker constitutions took turns napping in the sledhouses. To his relief, Luwin was not one of them anymore, unlike in the beginning. He may not like the skis, but they were better than trying to rest inside the sledhouses. While he was thankful for the clever seat harnesses that held them tight in place, no matter how abrupt the turn, it still wasn’t very good rest.

They cut straight across the fields, over wide plains, down snowy hills and over frozen rivers. Forward scouts would sweep ahead to find good stopovers, where they rested, ate, trained and underwent Lord Stark’s harsh but increasingly bearable cold training. Luwin finally reached the point where he could stand naked in the cold without shivering. For a little while at least.

They continued to avoid every major keep and village worth a name as well, which meant they never even came close to Oldstones or Fairmarket. Unfortunately, that came to an end just after they cleared the Hag’s Mire. They crested the riverbed to find something close to a war band in size, some three hundred strong. They bore banners and livery with two blue towers united by a bridge, on a silver-grey field.

Luwin considered their own side. With all of them from the Citadel and Rickard Stark’s home guard, they numbered two hundred seven and ten men in all. Not in their favour, but their mastery of the snow and mobility would serve them in god stead if it came to blows.

They came to a halt at the base of the river run, some hundred yards away from the veritable war party. Lord Stark then called three of his trusted guards, Marwyn and, to Luwin’s astonishment, even him after a moment’s pause.

“I should’ve done a detour east of Fairmarket,” Lord Stark said as he arrived within speaking distance. “Crossed the Green Fork early, like we did the Red and Blue. Don’t you think so?” The lord looked right at Luwin as he finished.

He tried not to gulp too obviously but replied honestly. Lord Stark had called on all but the youngest of them this way at some point. It didn’t need to mean more than that. “We’d have lost a day, perhaps more if we waded through that storm.” Winter weather down in the Riverlands callows wasn’t a trifle. “But we might have been back on the Kingsroad by now.”

“I was so pleased when we got that clear day,” Lord Stark said. “It let me see in advance what we might have been wading into. Alas, we traded the blizzard for the swamp.” There was no question that he wasn’t referring to the Hags Mire. “Well, let’s see who’s been camping here on the off-chance we passed by. There was no scouting involved, I can say that much. No one speak up unless I say so.”

They went forth on their skis and came to a stop mid-way to the other camp. Then they could but wait for the other side’s riders to reach them. It took a while. Most horses had trouble wading through just one foot of snow, and this one was two feet at least. Very tight and tough after so much time to settle too. Those mounts weren’t palfreys either, let alone garrons. Especially the main one. It was a destrier, sure enough. The grandest, mightiests of mounts that gave knights their glory at tourneys. It was also complete shit for riding in winter. It did poorly against the snow. Very poorly indeed.

They wound up standing there until three of knights dug a path for the rest after them. They were brothers by their looks, Luwin realized once they were close enough. They and their leader too. They must be four of Lord Walder Frey’s oldest sons. They all looked like weasels. The one on the destrier looked to be past forty, like an especially old and tired weasel. Luwin vaguely recalled from his extensive reading that Lord Frey’s heir had one or two grandchildren of his own already.

“I am Ser Stevron Frey, first son and heir of Lord Walder Frey of the Crossing. My lord father has sent me to greet you, and inquire as to who leads this strange convoy.”

“I am Rickard of House Stark, Warden of the North and Magnar of Winter.” Rickard Stark said, looking down at the rider from where he stood easily on top of the white snow-drift. “Think you to use this war band to bar my path?”

The knight was taken aback at the accusation but remained polite enough. “Not at all. My lord father would be most honored if you would share meat and mead with him in his castle and explain your purpose here. He is most interested to know what great urgency it must surely be, to drive the Warden of the North to risk a diplomatic incident by crossing into the Riverlands unbidden and unannounced with soldiery in tow.”

“Ser Stevron, I am indeed borne of great urgency so I hope you will not mind if I speak plainly.”

“Of course, my lord.”

“It is _not your place_ to question me,” Luwin made sure not to gape at the sudden, icy turn in Lord Stark’s mood. “It is not your father’s place to impose on my time. It is not your place to dictate the size of my guard force. I am not obligated to share my business with you, nor him, nor even with my peers, of which there are precisely _six_ in the whole world. Frey is not among those names. But you know that already, don’t you? Why else would you try to project _force_ so far afield in a winter like this? How very much like an upstart house, to think you can make _any_ demands of me. Unless House Frey is in the business of camping soldiers in the path of random travellers-”

“Lord Stark-“

“The last person who interrupted me died from their own poison.”

Ser Stevreon blanched. The knights with him shifted nervously. The Stark guards were fingering their weapons, Luwin noticed belatedly. All of them had bows too. And they had the high ground.

“Nonetheless, I spared what time I could to send word ahead to the relevant parties,” Lord Stark continued harshly. “Word which I _know_ was received. Your father should know well that I am not to be inconvenienced. Unless House Frey’s claims of importance are but words on the wind. Either way, it is no concern of mine who Lord Tully confides in or not. And yet here you are, a stone in my path. Demanding to know my private affairs. Demanding that I go out of my way to make a stop I neither want nor need. Risking a border dispute with House Mallister _and_ Charlton _and_ Vance of Atranta just to bar my way. Seeing as every minute I waste here is another minute my dying wife is deprived of the healers I went south to get for her, would you like to reconsider any of all you’ve claimed? Reassess what _else_ you may or may not have planned, perhaps?”

Stevron Frey’s skin suddenly seemed to contrast a lot less with the surrounding snow. “… My father bid me convey his words, and I have.” He croaked. “But House Frey means no harm upon the Lady Stark, or House Stark and the North.”

“No more need be said then. Good day.”

“Good day, Lord Stark.”

They returned to their convoy and resumed their journey unmolested, crossing straight over the frozen Green Fork without any need of the Twins, a ferry or anything else.

It wasn’t until late evening the next day, when they made one of their rare, full-night stops upon finally reaching the Kingsroad, that Luwin could talk about it properly with anyone else. No efforts had been made to keep any part of that exchange private, so everyone knew what had happened. Amazement, fright, disbelief and many other opinions flew back and forth between the maester hopefuls. The consensus was that Lord Stark had sounded impulsive to the point of madness, but that it was completely intentional. Probably. Mullin was the one whose conclusions probably hit closest to reality.

“Lord Stark is insane,” Ryben said gleefully over a strip of jerky.

“Watch your tongue!” Umber growled. Luwin was surprised he still spent more time with them than the other northmen.

“Oh shove off, Whoresbane. ‘Get out of my way or I’ll assume you’re part of the plot to murder my wife’ is what he basically said. He threatened a blood feud. A war between House Frey and all the North! Even you have to admit that sounds mad, unless Luwin’s looking to get a link in tall tales now?”

Luwin gave Ryben a most unimpressed stare. He did not appreciate being thrown in front of the horse. At all.

“Or he _wants_ people to think him a mad dog,” Mullin mused. He was in his smallclothes, lying bare-skinned on the snowy floor of the hut with his hands under his head. He wasn’t muscled _quite_ like a maiden’s fantasy yet but he was getting close. “Either news hasn’t caught up, or it _has_ reached the Twins and Lord Frey made a rash decision. Both options illustrate the current state of the new home we’re traveling to. The foreign dealings of House Stark and the North are balanced on an edge. On one side is all new interest by everyone. On the other side is business as usual, if only for southron peace of mind. Though less ‘nothing to see’ and more ‘don’t want the trouble of the mad dog’s nose twitching in my direction next.’ Say your guard dog breaks something precious. You can’t just kill him or your property will get invaded by thieves and robbers or what have you.”

“Lord Stark’s not a dog,” Hother grumbled.

“But he wants to be thought as one, methinks,” Mullin replied. “Or maybe a wolf. A mad wolf. The Mad Wolf of the North. And then there’s _who_ he showed this false front to.”

“House Frey,” Ryben said mockingly. “A glorified tollman just six centuries old. Mean-spirited, uppity weasels all of them. Mistrusted by practically everyone. Disliked too, and not just because Old Walder’s a miserly cunt. But because they always reach _above_ their station.”

“Genna Lannister,” Rhodry said. Luwin carefully didn’t react unduly to him speaking up, lest he sabotage his progress. Mullin had done well to start training him in the arts of war. “And now, this.”

“Trying to _force_ the Lord Warden of the North to divert from his path and pay their toll,” Ryben said. “Or that’s how Lord Stark will be able to spin it in the future, if he wants.”

“Nobody will believe the Freys over him,” Mullin said, rolling onto his front. His back was a bright pink instead of the red Luwin still went after the first quarter of an hour. He had no goosebumps either. “Or they won’t _openly_ believe them. They may even be inclined to think well of Stark for being at odds with them. Lord Walder’s just a couple of grandbastard generations away from fielding an army out of his own breeches, yet they have no feats of valor or honor to their name. Even though the last war happened pretty recently, as these things go.”

“Should even be enough confusion to deter any other nosy cunts from bothering him and us for a while, least from less than great houses,” Ryben mused. “Meantime, House Tully’s been given a reason to publically censure House Frey without losing face. Then there’s the Iron Throne. Stark’s mad dog reputation may even be a balm to house _Hightower’s_ image. He _broke_ the _Citadel_. Half or more of the realm are liable to think Stark and Hightowers are themselves in a blood feud now. But if this incident reaches King’s Landing before Lord Leyton is inevitably summoned there to account to the King...”

They talked of a lot more than that, especially about the long-term strategic implications of souring relations with the House that could decide whether or not you could cross the Trident. But that wasn’t likely to become too important in their lifetime. After all, what were the odds of the North waging war on the south?

Luwin still thought their conclusions were a bit simplistic. Or perhaps not simple enough? It could just be that Lord Rickard was merely venting. He clearly hadn’t planned for the encounter. But Marwyn agreed with the broad strokes during dinner.

“They’ll call it the Hour of the Wolf again and just be glad it’s over,” Marwyn grunted over his soup. “Put it out of their minds lest they need to take even the briefest break from that game of thrones they like to play so much. Dismiss it as Stark being a snob at worst. Even then they’ll say it’s to be expected. The real question is whether Hoster Tully will really let it pass without any resentment over Stark causing tension between him and such a strong bannerman.”

It should have been the end of the matter. And it was, for most of them. But Luwin thought his Master in the Mysteries also seemed a tad distracted. Not that anyone else noticed, except Mullin maybe, but Luwin was becoming a dab hand at detecting what few subtleties were speckled amidst the abrasiveness. He lingered behind when the others dispersed and took a seat next to the archmaester on the log. If not Luwin, who else was going to inquire after his wellbeing?

Luwin thought that was immensely sad. “Master, is everything alright?”

Marwyn turned his face away from the fire pit and looked up at him with a strange expression.

Luwin would have been intimidated by the sight once, but this time it only spurred him on. “You seem out of sorts. Can I make you some tea or…?”

“… You’re a good boy, Luwin.”

 _Now_ he felt outright alarmed. He didn’t know how to follow up though, so he just sat and waited. Looked around while the world reoriented itself. Lord Rickard was at the edge of camp, talking to the smallfolk again. They were a pittance compared to High Heart or the Blackwood lands, but groups of them still cropped up to talk to Lord Stark even now, whenever they stopped for more than an hour.

“The High King’s words do travel far, borne by the winds of winter,” Marwyn said with uncharacteristic melancholy. They sounded like the lines of an old song, its true meaning lost in translation. “I wish I could believe my own eyes.”

“… Master?”

“A highborn that treats honestly.”

As opposed to one who’d just pre-empted the destruction of his own reputation by way of _faking_ it to the one house in Westeros guaranteed to bungle it all the way around back in his favor.

“What if he does though?” Luwin pondered. “Treat honestly. I don’t think there’s anything of what he told Ser Frey that he didn’t mean.”

“But he’d have refrained if it were anyone else, and he’d have meant that just as much.”

Luwin didn’t know what to say when he saw the man descend even further into gloom. He didn’t know what he needed to say. What he should say, to dispel this fey mood. He didn’t even know what had brought it on. It couldn’t be just politics. He’d already tried to think about everything he could think of but still didn’t see the way. It was a common thing for him, much to Luwin’s dismay. To never get the right ideas when he needed.

But he had a way to deal with that now too. So he didn’t try to think anymore about it. He just waited and watched. And waited still.

Then it came to him, like a revelation. And it didn’t take a whole day this time. For the first time, he managed to harness his subconscious penchant for puzzles in time for it to be of actual use. “You told me before, that you don’t make nearly as many rhetorical questions as you seem.”

“I did say that.”

“Master… This wasn’t a rhetorical question just now, but…”

“Spit it out, boy.”

“Might… there be anything _else_ you wish you could believe your own eyes on?”

Marwyn looked past the fire at the white raven preening itself on the log across from them. He was silent so long that Luwin thought he wouldn’t answer, but then… “Have you ever been inside the Starry Sept?”

Well, that came out of nowhere. “Once, just to see what it looked like on the inside.”

“What stuck with you most?”

“The candles.” Luwin said immediately.

“Aye, the candles,” Marwyn said. “Such a grand edifice. Made of black marble and arched windows and lit by thousands of candles to represent the stars. It’s almost like they’re meant to be a grand, uplifting symbol for those who gaze upon them. Candlelight. Fire turned into a symbol of the beautiful life waiting for the faithful past the heavens. Such beautiful things, stars. So bright. So enlightening. So noble.”

“… Aren’t they?”

“They’re a pile of shit.”

Luwn gaped. He couldn’t help it.

“The Rhoynar taught the Andals steel and warcraft. This happened just as Valyria was turning its eyes west in the waning days of their war with the Ghiscary. What does that tell you?”

Luwin’s mouth clamped shut, but it’s not like he would ever deny a maester an answer. “They wanted allies against the Dragonlords.”

“Aye,” Marwyn said, taking a large bite of sourleaf. “Then a new religion suddenly comes out of nowhere and spreads as fast as plague through rats. It’s the most prescriptive, most _organised_ religion of all of written history. Then the Andals promptly pick up and leave Rhoyne in the dust and cross into Westeros with seven-pointed stars cut into their flesh and streaming blood.”

“… What does the Andal Invasion have to do with anything?”

“You still look only at the surface. Listen and _learn_. No religion has ever saved anyone from death and suffering. No god ever came down from heaven to save mankind. It’s always man that has to solve his own problems. And yet you still get an uppity cult somehow erupting into that plague known as _organised_ _religion_ ,” Marwyn spat the words like they were snake venom freshly sucked from a bite. “Always it’s carried on the back of one thing: _symbols_. Legends. Stories. Omens. Warnings to scare you into doing what they want. Interesting thing, it always comes down to your money and your life. For our age, dragons are the symbols – they brought with them the decay of our highest born. Decay in power. Decay in morals. Decay in wisdom. In the time of Hugor and Argos, the seven-pointed star became the symbol of decay for the _common_ born. You think the Faith of the Seven started out preaching about protecting women and children? They wouldn’t have conquered even half the Vale before their men revolted! The seven-pointed star brought submission to those born under it, and it brought war and death to those _not_ born under it. It brought ruin and subjugation too, to the children of those brave and wise enough to know there is no god coming to save you. Isn’t it strange that the Andals started getting subdued by the First Men just around the time they stopped cutting that symbol in their flesh? You think it’s a coincidence that it took the Hightowers on the other side of the world from Andalos with no blood of Hugor in their veins to finally turn the Faith of the Seven into something productive?”

“… Are you saying the Faith of the Seven used blood magic?”

“You still aren’t listening. Or I’m an even worse teacher than I thought. The answer is _maybe_ , but that’s not the point!”

“I’m sorry master, I don’t understand what you want me to see.”

“Stars, boy. _Stars_. It’s starlight that guides the worst predators of the night. It’s by starlight that the Deep Ones come out of their seas to feast and raid. It’s for a sunless sky that the abominations of Leng wish to trade away the sun. It was a red star that heralded the Long Night. When the Bloodstone Emperor of eastern myth killed his sister the Amethyst Empress and caused a generational darkness, it was a black star that came down from the sky for him to worship and work evil magics. When the second moon flew too close to the sun, it was a red star that broke it and brought dragons raining from the sky. Even the exception to this trend only proves the rule. House Dayne’s sword is said to have been made from a fallen star. Depending how you read the legends, Dawn may have been Lightbringer itself. The flaming sword wielded by the hero of the Dawn. Hyrkoon the Hero, Yin Tar, Neferion, Eldric Shadowchaser who used a sword pale as ice to beat the Others back! But you need only study the myths to realise the star came down _before_ the Long Night even started. One of those dragons that rained down perhaps? If the moon shattered, maybe the dragons were just meteorites? They’d certainly look like flaming beasts at night, wouldn’t they?” Marwyn spat a glob of red phlegm into the fire. It hissed like roast pig. “Stars, Luwin. As portents go, they are _not_ good ones. Never. They don’t bring light and love. Especially when you’re not born under them to begin with. They herald _doom_. The more they figure in a cult’s symbology, the bigger the odds of butchered bodies in the cellar. And the farther East you go, the closer to Asshai you chase rumors and spellcraft and arcane stories, the more stars you’ll see in your dreams as warlocks, blood mages and shadowbinders try to reel you in. Promises of answers. The wisdom of the stars. Signs. Dream visitations. Just a small price for their knowledge. Just a bit less small the more you ask. Your gold. Your time. Your blood.” Marwyn’s face twisted into a strange, grim smile. “Docksite temple sacrifices.”

Luwin felt a terrible chill run down his spine and it had nothing to do with the cold winter. “… Master,” Luwin ventured, thinking he might finally see where this is going. “The vision in the candle. What did it really mean?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? The old man that died. What did you feel from him at the end?”

“He was… joyful.” Luwin answered. He didn’t think he’d ever forget it. “He didn’t want to go on being so small. He was glad when he didn’t have to, I think. Content. Excited, even, to be more than he was.”

“Joyful, huh?” Marwyn wondered. “More than he was, huh? Is that what happened, do you think?”

The words were the same as every other time Luwin failed a test of some kind, yet the tone wasn’t. “I think so?” But it was as much a question as an answer, wasn’t it? “What… did it look like to you, master?

“I saw a dying man,” Marwyn said, sounding more like the ghost of High heart than anything else. “I saw a creature of the night ready to take him. I saw a vision of heaven that promises everything as easy as dreaming. After all, with the right dream everything can be real. Oh, what a wonderful vision. A creature of the dark and void and it was _good_. Sure, he wants your soul, but he’ll pay you with so much enlightenment that you’ll leave it behind anyway. After all, isn’t the soul just a different sort of body? The world is made of Substance, Motion and Consciousness, isn’t it? If motion is what governs life and ends with you leaving your _substance_ behind, why should consciousness be the end of it?” Marwyn sounded like he actually wished he could believe it. Wondering. Awestruck, almost. But his final words were neither easy nor hopeful. “Whatever that was… that’s what blood sacrifice _wishes_ it was.”

“Master…” But Luwin didn’t know what to say.

They sat there alone at the fire until the embers burned low and Lord Stark had almost finished with the smallfolk. Luwin wondered about the distance the guards kept from them still. He wished it was just lingering mistrust after the Citadel’s treachery and nothing darker.

“Do you still want to learn from me, Luwin?” Marwyn asked suddenly, though he didn’t face him. He was watching the white raven still. “Do you want to learn deeper of the mysteries?”

“… I think so.”

“Well I need you to _know_ so. Going in cokeyed won’t cut it anymore. Not where we’re going. Now with what we might be getting into.”

Luwin felt alarmed all over again. “… What do you mean? Why would you say this?”

“Because that warlock or sorcerer or whatever it was had a cloak of flames, but underneath was a _void._ In all my learning and my travels, I only found three things that appear that way in the dream realm. It could be a deliberate seeming, in which case he or she or it is beyond us and possibly not human at all. It could be a dream dear to their heart, and therefore closest to the surface of their thoughts. Or it could be a wound.” Luwin hadn’t heard Marwyn so grim even while he was vowing revenge on the citadel traitors. “Substance is Substance, Motion begets Motion, and Consciousness suffers vacuums even more poorly than nature does. Connection, relation, that’s how it exists at all. That thing will be influencing the dreams and thoughts of everyone around it and no mistake. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I don’t even know if it’s doing it knowingly. Or at all, outside that dream specifically. What I _can_ say, though, is this: the net it casts is _wide_. And while you were too put-upon in to ask anything of the wolf-pup, I was not so far gone. And what it told me is this: that thing was its sibling. And the ‘old ones of the forest’ had barred it from the _Greendream_ because, in its own words, ‘they think he will break everything.’”

The white raven stopped preening itself and hopped over the fire to land on Luwin’s knee, though it was Marwyn its eyes were locked upon. What a strange and friendly bird, Luwin thought. Lord Stark had excellent tastes in pets, if nothing else.

Marwyn, bizarrely, returned its stare with one just as intense. “I am going to Winterfell after all. Either to treat with whoever that dreamer is, or to kill it dead.”

“Dead! Dead! Dead!”

The raven flew away from them, back to the shoulder of the man whose letters it bore and whose food it ate. Lord Rickard was rubbing his eyes when the bird reached him. And then the man dismissed the last commoner, looked across the camp straight to Marwyn and nodded in the direction of his personal snow hut.

Luwin felt a puzzle he didn’t know he was working on all but smash into his brain.

Marwyn saw the look on his face and laughed deep in his belly. “Hahaha! Ah. Thank you Luwin. Truly. It’s that look of dawning realisation I live for. Cherish that feeling, lad. It will serve you well. Take it from someone who knows what its lack brings. Ignorance isn’t bliss, no matter what priests say. Dawning realisation should _always_ be your purpose. When things link up in a way never before seen, that’s when we truly glimpse the mechanics of the universe. The results of logic, of natural progression? Boring! An expected result? Dull! An obvious next step? Bah! Where’s the point in that? We want to see the unexpected! The strange and terrible! A dream may soothe, but our nightmares make us run and cry ‘BEHOLD!’”

Easy for him to say. After this, Luwin didn’t fancy he’ll ever want to dream dreams at all! “You know what, no. Just no. _No_.” Luwin grumbled, not even knowing what he was about to say until the words were out. “We’ve gotten _far_ to accustomed to making plans based on suspicions and assumptions. I’d much rather act based only on what I _know_ instead.”

Marwyn laughed. It sounded startled, like a sleeping hound that had just been splashed with a bucket of water. “Oho! Indeed! Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is . . . and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. Hah! That’s what I like about you, Luwin. You have such wonderful common sense.” The Mage pushed himself to his feet, though he paused before leaving. “You’ll be Maester of Winterfell, I hope you realise.”

All talk of dreams and prophecies and demons abruptly scattered to the seven winds. “What?”

“You’ll most likely be Winterfell’s maester, if anything at all survives of the Citadel’s customs by the end of this trip.” Marwyn had the gall to look surprised that Luwin hadn’t known this. “Oh come now, lad. Who else could it be? Hother’s got his own family loyalty and Qyburn is unfit.”

Luwin was reeling. “But… I thought…”

“You thought it would be me?” Marwyn seemed far too amused for someone who’d just stated his plan to possibly murder someone in their master’s employ. Oh gods, Marwyn planned to murder someone in their master’s employ! “Luwin. Lad. Lord Stark’s wife is on her death bed and his heir was almost murdered because his maester decided he knew better than him. Lord Stark wants someone humble, loyal and obedient. I can at most be _one_ of those things, assuming I live to see the morn anyway.”

Having finished his spiel, Marwyn turned to stomp after Lord Stark as summoned.

“Master, wait…” Luwin jumped to his feet, but found them locked in place.

“Sweet dreams lad,” Marwyn grunted fondly as he walked away. “May they be cut and dry. But just in case they aren’t, remember this: dreamers are aware of a lot more asleep than awake. That goes for you just as much as for anyone trying to make your dream their own.”

The dark end to that conversation left Luwin feeling worried, fretful and completely out of sorts in every way he didn’t have mind to find words for. He didn’t even care about the strange looks being sent to him by the stark guards in earshot. The mage’s words sounded like they had multiple layers of meaning loaded onto them.

Then it occurred to him that he might have just heard Marwyn’s last words.

The horror and terror he experienced were beyond description. The despair he felt next was almost as terrible, upon realising that he couldn’t do what he usually did in this situation, which was go running to the maesters for help.

Then he walked back his own thoughts and literally slapped himself.

He’d completely forgotten about Qyburn!


	21. All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (V)

## “-. 274 AC .-“

“Maester!” Luwin staggered to a halt in front of the snow hut. “Maester Qyburn? Maester Qyburn!” Lacking anything to knock on, Luwin awkwardly clapped his hands at the tunnel mouth. The noise was swallowed by the winter wind as easily as his shouts. He immediately felt foolish. Then he belatedly spotted the guards standing watch just close enough that the snowdrift didn’t entirely hide them from sight and Luwin felt like twice the fool. It threw him from fretful distress so far into the abyss of panic that he got on all fours and crawled into the hut as fast as he could. “Maester Qyburn!”

Qyburn turned from the hearth in surprise, quill frozen mid-stroke over his journal or whatever it was.

Luwin froze like a startled hare right there on his hands and knees at the entrance. What was he going to do, spill all of his master’s secrets in the bosom of a total stranger? A total stranger who likes to cut people while they’re still alive? He’d not exchanged more than scattered greetings with the man, this was a terrible idea! Gods, he really was an idiot, he’d not planned any further than this!

Qyburn put his stationery away. “Come on, then. Come in.”

Before Luwin knew it, he was sitting by the fire with tea mug in hand eating roast chestnuts. He looked around in a daze. Qyburn had at some point moved to the other side of the hut and was putting together a bag of knickknacks. A wax plate for notes, a writing needle, a stack of papers held with iron rings, charcoal sticks, a measuring tape and various other instruments. Feeling like an intruder, Luwin looked away, though he’d have had to shut his eyes completely to avoid taking in the rest of the hut.

It was quite the place. For all that the maester was housed alone, the hut was actually quite spacious. There were two stools, two folding tables, two sets of bedding, two of everything really, along with half a dozen plank mats laid out for other bedrolls or bodies to lay down. But then, there would have to be, wouldn’t there? Qyburn had fallen into the role of camp physician. How many of the guards had passed under this same roof? How many more would? Had Lord Stark himself sat where he now sat? No, Qyburn would have gone to him, not the other way around. Unless Lord Stark wanted to make some point or other? How much of this was a test, really? And if it wasn’t, did that mean the man somehow trusted Qyburn more than he did his master? But how could anyone think Marwyn was any less relia-

“I’m guessing the Archmaester is off pre-empting potential future problems in his usual manner.”

Luwin choked and spat out the tea, coughing violently.

“Oh dear!” Qyburn balked, rushing back to steady him. “Oh dear, oh dear, I am so sorry young one.” He knelt down and began wiping him clean with his sleeve. “Perhaps things are not unfolding _quite_ in their usual manner, has the Archmaester…? No,” the old man shook his head before Luwin could protest. “No, he’d never do anything that would send you screaming for help, especially not to a maester after what happened to you. And if it were our hosts who took some manner of offence, I’d have much richer company by now. Lord Stark is much more straightforward than most. In spirit at least.”

Luwin took a few halting gasps and went to put the mug down. He was shocked he hadn’t dropped it. “I should go,” he rasped.

Qyburn sighed, but smiled kindly regardless and pushed the cup back. “At least take the tea with you. Would be a shame to waste it.”

Luwin blinked in surprise and looked at the Maester. Was he not going to insist he stay? He suddenly had to smother a sharp pang of disappointment.

“Just bring back the mug after.”

Qyburn sounded outright fatherly but it only made Luwin regret his flighty decision all the more. He cursed his manners for backfiring on him too. Then he loathed himself for needing the succour in the first place. Bad enough he was a gullible fool, now it turned out he was also a craven. He nodded jerkily and rose to leave.

He was very surprised when Qyburn followed him out.

“I’ve one last matter to see to as well, nothing to worry about.”

Luwin watched the man disappear into the evening before going his own way, feeling foolish, embarrassed and twice as raw as when he’d gone in. The urge to flee to the safety of his bedroll was almost overpowering, but Luwin had just seen what happened when he succumbed to panic. Poor judgment was what. Poor enough to go running to the one person in their whole party that was still tied to the ones who’d consigned him to die in the darkness. It was an unfair comparison, but Qyburn had made it himself.

He decided to walk a full circuit of their latest camp, figuring he’d at least finish the tea before turning in. Even with the wind, the night was relatively mild compared to those before it. By Northern standards at least. He ignored the little voice telling him he was just stalling in the hopes that Marwyn would re-emerge from Lord Stark’s hut safe and sound.

Luwin held the wooden mug close to his chest, trying to preserve the warmth. It was a thick and solid thing, but delicately craved into the seeming of an eastern serpentine dragon wrapped around it like a sothoryi constrictor. The tip of its tail was the only part unwound from the whole, forming the handle. The whiskered creature gazed at him almost paternally through knowing, snake-like eyes.

He wasn’t even half-way into his walk when he saw Qyburn again. The maester was with the dogs when he found him, calling them over by name and feeding them treats while checking their paws, their teeth, the girth of their limbs, their weight and other features. Already he’d filled half the wax plate with annotations. Luwin thought back to what he’d glimpsed of the man’s chain. There had certainly been more than one link of brass in them. With each corresponding to one animal, it was far from unlikely that he knew the care and breeding of dogs among whatever other skills he’d gained over his long decades of life.

Too out of sorts to bother with discretion, Luwin creeped as close as he dared without disrupting the man’s work. The fog had cleared a fair bit and the moonlight was bright enough that even the light reflected off the snow was enough to distinguish some colors, at least when combined with the torchlight. Qyburn seemed to have a tic as well, tugging at his chain every time he finished inspecting or writing down something. Luwin let his eyes linger on it, counting each link as the man spun the chain. That he could do it so naturally was saying a lot, considering it was wrapped around his neck three times. The maester had forged the links in sets, making them easy to count, and even easier for Luwin’s jaw to slacken with each new metal sheen he spotted.

Two grey steel for blacksmithing. Two black steel for architecture and engineering. Four black iron for ravenry, which meant he could breed and train not just black but white ravens also. Four brass for animal husbandry, four antimony links for survival in the wilds, four mathematics and economics links of yellow gold, even four links of platinum for natural science. There were two red gold for jewelcraft too, perhaps he could finally award Hother the one he deserved? But there were the rarer links there too, which made Luwin feel rather inadequate the more of them he saw. Four white gold links in alchemy. Four zinc in languages. Two links in Valyrian steel for magic and mysteries that Luwin couldn’t even begin to guess at. _Five_ links of lead in diplomacy and politics. Five. How genuine was his manner, really? Could Luwin even tell the difference if he knew? And the crowning work to beggar all that came before, the silver. Numbering _six_.

Six silver links. Six. Luwin didn’t even know you could go that high without being Archmaester of healing. It spoke to pushing certain boundaries that weren’t to be crossed. Not without consequences that only that lofty position could shield you from. Three silvers meant you knew and could administer every established cure and treatment. Four meant you knew the experimental ones. Five meant you’d proven at least one of said experimental procedures effective. And six meant that you’d found or created an all-new treatment of your own. Or otherwise advanced the knowledge of healing and the body. There was, in theory, a seventh link for those who discovered something so momentous that the entire field had to be redesigned. But that was just theoretical. Silver wasn’t like zinc, which you earned one of for every language you knew. Or brass, which you got for every type of animal you learned to breed better strains of. Seven silver links was a symbol of the unachievable mastery over life and death that only the gods could claim.

Ebrose had once tried to make the seven, Luwin recalled from his own learning. Through a treatise on humours based on records of the great spring sickness of 209-210 AC. It coincided with the man earning the Archmaester post, but the findings never held up. The treatments derived from it proved ineffective and even harmful on what ills and pockets of plague they were later attempted on.

That barely found purchase on Luwin’s mind though. Forty-seven links. Luwin doubted even Marwyn had so many, especially as he was just forty years of age instead of Qyburn’s fifty seven. Forty-seven links. Forty-seven! For all that Luwin himself had learned three links every year, he knew better than to think that was sustainable. At some point you started having to review your existing knowledge lest you fall behind and forget what earned you your links to begin with. How much had Qyburn forgotten? To have collected so many links in so many fields? And if he’d reached his fifties _without_ forgetting most of what he’d learned, then…

“Well, that’s us done,” Qyburn told the last hound with a pat on the head. The dog licked his fingers. They certainly seemed to like the man. “Same time tomorrow? Good boy, now let me just-eh? Is anyone out there?” Qyburn hunched on himself cautiously, as if expecting a threat despite the army of killer hounds around him and the guards on watch everywhere. “Tom, if you or the boys are out to cause mischief again I’ll ask that-wait, Luwin? Luwin, is that you over there?”

“How are you not Archmaester?” Luwin blurted, his voice sounding unnaturally loud to his own ears. Looking around furtively as if he’d broken some law by speaking, he scurried over to the improvised pen which surrounded the various dog houses, made of snow blocks like everything else. “How are you not Archmaester? You could earn the links for every other field from skill crossover alone.”

Qyburn gathered his things and set out for his hut, Luwin in tow. “I’m not certain it’s my place to explain that to you. Has Marwyn not touched on this yet?”

“Why does everyone treat me like an extension of him? I barely studied under the man before this whole mess!”

Qyburn thinned his lips at his outburst, not saying anything.

“I’m sorry, maester, it’s just… I’m so frustrated.”

“I can see that.” The lack of pardon was a lot more obvious than it once might have been. “To answer your question, it’s politics. As you said. I should have earned links in every subject just from the skill crossover. Assuming I didn’t decide against that recognition, which I assure you I did not, why would I be denied so many worthy extensions to my chain? The Archmaester post is as much a reflection of your knowledge as it is of your influence.”

It took a moment for the pieces to come together, then Luwin dropped his head and palmed his face with a groan. Because he clearly wasn’t sufficiently disgusted with himself already. Gods, how blind was he that even the politicking right under his own nose escaped him? To be declared Archmaester meant you had the most links in one subject and at least one link in every other subject. Of _course_ other maesters and Archmaesters would hem and haw whenever someone vied for such a post. Why wouldn’t they squeeze every aspirant for personal favors? And what if they felt threatened? Marwyn had all but spelled it out to him and the others too.

“Try not to worry about it too much?” Qyburn awkwardly tried to console him. “It’s not exactly you it reflects poorly on, you know, that the Conclave doesn’t live up to its good name.”

“I appreciate the thought maester,” Luwin said, all but clinging to the tea mug. “But that doesn’t change that fact I apparently lack all shreds of discernment.”

“Now don’t say that…”

“I’m starting to think I should’ve just stayed home.” The words felt bitter on his tongue. “Become a tradesman like my father and be done with it.”

“That would have been a waste.”

“Would it?” Luwin found himself unable to withhold the tide of frustration anymore. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s best I went far away from the family business. I can’t imagine what I’d have done to match this selective blindness I seem to possess now. Maybe I’d have become the first trader to think coin somehow _isn’t_ the lifeblood of commerce, that would’ve been a riot. Because I can’t imagine what else would be preposterous enough to match this.”

“Ah, but it isn’t.”

“What?”

“Coin. It is not the lifeblood of commerce.”

The three gold links in the pouch at his belt seemed to weigh more than all the rest combined all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, maester, but I don’t follow.”

“Time, Luwin. It all boils down to time. Coin is important, but not the most important or there wouldn’t have been trade at all before the first coin was cast. It’s _time_ that’s important. It doesn’t matter if you get twice the gold for a deal if it takes thrice as long to strike it. Harbor fees have to be paid, guards hired, watchmen bribed, ships maintained…”

“Oh…” It turned out he’d not _quite_ struck the bottom of the well of idiocy.

“And it goes even further than that,” Qyburn said, almost enthusiastic now. “The time you spend selling cargo for the perfect price is time you could have spent bringing forth another batch, or doing anything else to your benefit… this applies to everything, not just caravans and ships, but the grain trade, smallfolk labor, even war… _Time_ is the true coin, Luwin. The universal currency that all things follow.”

“… I’ve done you a disservice, maester,” Luwin said glumly.

“I don’t see how. We’ve never spoken before this.”

“That’s part of it. I thought…” He trailed off as they came to a halt at Qyburn’s snow hut. “Well, I thought a lot of stupid things.”

“But?”

“You’ve the heart of a teacher.” Luwin immediately felt embarrassed at the admission and hid his face in the mug. Just one last mouthful of tea left. He wished it were more, if only to delay their parting. He seemed to have grown distressingly dependent on authority figures. At least Lord Stark would be happy, Luwin thought gloomily. “Thank you for the lesson.”

Qyburn seemed surprised, but then his nervousness and awkwardness seemed to evaporate. “You are most welcome.” He looked so pleased at that simple acknowledgment. Luwin wondered how long he’d been denied that simple thing. Come to think of it, he’d never seen his name on any lectures. If he really deserved to be Archmaester but they didn’t- “Then perhaps you’ll accept another lesson. One I actually mean to give this time.”

“Oh,” Luwin was so surprised he nearly forgot to give the man his cup back. “Of course!”

Qyburn accepted his mug, stood there looking at him uncertainly – wondering if he should invite him back inside perhaps? – then he nodded sharply and steadied himself as if to- “Then my lesson is this: don’t bother with prophecies.”

Luwin blinked, taken aback.

“I’ve no way of knowing what all occurred to leave you in this state, but I’m assuming at least some of it has to do with that dwarf woman at High Heart.”

“… I suppose?” He’d not seen this change of topic coming at all. “Marwyn says that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman who takes your member in her mouth and makes you moan from the pleasure only to then… well, bite your prick off.” Luwin looked away, feeling the heat of a blush fill his face. “Or that’s the gist of the quote he gave at least. Gorghan of Old Ghis, or so he says.”

“Indeed,” Qyburn said, pretending not to notice his embarrassment. “Did he explain why?”

“No.” Not that he had much time with the raven and Lord Stark and-

“I respect the Archmaester greatly, and his way of guiding one to truth and self-discovery is to be revered. But I disagree with him on this. Of those things he considers a pinnacle of insight one should strive towards, I believe some work better as foundation. Especially for people like you who are still building it. This, then, is the lesson: don’t bother with prophecies. The only ones fit to interpret them are those who make them. Or they would be, if they weren’t all driven insane by their own gift.”

Luwin blinked at the other man. “Alright, I think.”

Qyburn shook his head and looked stern for once. “Don’t just agree. There is good reason for what I’m telling you. Can you tell what it is?”

He really _did_ have this in common with Marwyn. “My surety in my own reasoning has taken a rather harsh beating recently.”

“Then know this. Wherever prophecy comes from, it ultimately comes through in whatever portents and symbols the _prophet_ understands. So, the dwarf woman. Unless you think in precisely the same way and understand the world through precisely the same terms and symbols and metaphors and half-remembered visions from your dreams, you’re not likely to get anything but poison by trying to use her foretelling for anything.”

“Oh, that’s what you meant,” Luwin finally understood what he was getting at.

“Quite so. Whatever information comes, wherever it comes from, it still has to translate in concepts the seer understands and works with. That’s not counting that we can’t even be sure she didn’t deliberately use oblique symbolism just to mess with us, being so old and starved for fresh entertainment. Take this passage for example. ‘I saw the Blind Seer walk beneath warm stars in lockstep with the son of the burned woman and the corpse cutter.’” Luwin forced himself not to react at Qyburn apparently not knowing the Blind Seer in question was right in front of him. “The son of the burned woman and the corpse cutter. Who is the burned woman? Is it any burned woman? If so, why single her out? Is it Jenny of Oldstones who was supposedly her friend and died at Summerhall? But then who is the corpse cutter whose son the Blind Seer will walk in lockstep with, whatever that means? Or perhaps the passage doesn’t even mean that? Maybe it means that the burned woman’s son will walk with the Blind Seer and a completely unrelated corpse cutter that never met any of them even once in their life. In which case it may as well be any necromancer or silent sister or maester or cannibal, or just some random brigand who finds pleasure in cutting up dead bodies.” _Or maybe it’s you_ , Luwin thought but didn’t say. “Do you see my point?”

“I do,” Luwin answered, already thinking about the rest and how little time he’d spent _not_ thinking about it all since High Heart. The god of whales? What did that even mean? A banner? A house crest? An Ibbenese whaling ship? And the king that was promised, promised by who? For what? It really was all just a downward spiral of madness, wasn’t it? “Thank you, Maester. I think I might actually be able to rest tonight.” It wasn’t even a lie. He felt lighter than he did before their conversation now that he no longer felt the need to dwell on the whole thing. Not that it was all or even most of what was currently stressing him, but it was a load off his soul.

“I hope I helped at least a little,” Qyburn said, clearly knowing the direction Luwin’s thoughts had gone. “Goodnight, Luwin. Be well.”

“Goodnight, Maester. Thank you again.”

Luwin thought to what he’d seen in the Glass Candle. If what Qyburn said applied to everything that came through another person’s mind, did that vision come through in portents and symbols Luwin understood, or those of the _other_ party works by? The one that remotely ignited the candle through… soul sacrifice? What were those weirwood tears even supposed to be?

He slept poorly that night, but at least it made it easy to keep the fire going. Not that they needed it with so many warm bodies packed so close together. His dreams were brief and fleeting. The only one he could recall was a glimpse of Rickard Stark using that unusual hand drill to dig holes into the weirwood trunks at High Heart all the way into the ground. Luwin wasn’t sure that wasn’t just his tired mind conjuring memories though. Lord Rickard and his men had spent the better part of their first day there doing that. Drilling holes through the middle of the bone-white stumps and then digging through them into the ground below with those strange scissor-shovels they called postholers. And every time they were done, they’d drop new weirwood seeds inside and cover them with the same soil and wood chips they’d dug up.

Luwin wondered how many times others must have tried to replant those trees only for nothing to come of it. He wondered if those tools had been made just for that reason. By that child of the forest or whatever it was.

The call-up was startling when it finally came. Luwin didn’t waste time on the morning meditation or exercises or even helping with the cooking. He rose, left the hut before anyone else more than rubbed at their eyes and rushed straight for Marwyn’s, crawling inside without even bothering to call a warning. “Master Marwyn!”

Marwyn was mid-way through tying the straps on his jerkin and gave startled “Oof!” when Luwin all but plowed into him.

“You’re alive!” Luwin didn’t even try to stand up and hugged him around the middle. “I’m so glad.”

“For Others’ sake,” Marwyn grunted, hugging him back to steady him. “You left home far too young, I swear. Soon as you’re back I expect you to squeeze your parents for every hug and headpat you’re owed, you hear me boy?”

“Yes, master,” Luwin mumbled into the man’s belly, eyes moist from sheer relief. “Anything you want.”

“Want! Want! Want!”

Luwin flinched and looked wildly for the source of the call. He found it in the form of a familiar white raven. It was looking at him from a new perch right behind where the maester stood.

“Ignore it.”

Luwin allowed himself to be guided to a nearby stool but found that he couldn’t, in fact, ignore anything. “Master, what happened?”

“Lord Stark’s turned _exactingly_ thorough in questioning the dreams and visions we’ve been having.” The archmaester peeled a sourleaf off a bale, shoved it in his mouth, and began to chew it as he always did. “He’d been calling on me for various things already, but now he’s right persnickety. Not entirely uninformed on portents and symbols either. Unwilling to trust me to mind my own business as of today too, can you imagine? This here bird’s gonna be spending most of its time with me from now on, to keep an eye on me.”

“You said you’d murder Lord Stark’s servant and you got a pet,” Luwin said flatly. “That’s it?”

“What, being watched at all times isn’t enough? I literally went and said I was ready and willing to murder on behalf of him and his, all out of the goodness of my heart. Any other highborn would’ve been won over right there. Instead, Lord Stark’s turned all suspicious and wary of my noble intentions! Had the nerve to say I’ve no business questioning who he trusts or not. Bah! Withholding information on whoever or whatever’s been working magic on his supposed behalf does _not_ stand him in good stead. I’d not’ve let it go if I were on my own. He’d be mad to think I’d even consider it when I have you all to look after too. Oh, he feels protective towards this unknown asset? Well so am I towards mine, don’t you know. I’m not sworn to him, most of you still aren’t either by his own decision, and I’d bet on my judgement being better than his any day of the year!”

And he just goes and says so? Luwin looked uncomfortably between Marwyn and the bird watching them.

“Don’t get your bunghole in a pucker. Lord Stark doesn’t skinchange as much as you’d think. If I were a lesser man I’d maybe fret over the suspicion that he might be watching. As is, though, this here bunch of feathers is just a mildly useful drain on my supply of corn.”

“Corn! Corn! Corn!”

“Gotta say, though,” Marwyn reached into a pouch and held out a handful of kernels for the bird to eat. “It’s quite the thing to have the Warden of the North himself eating from the palm of my hand.”

The raven ate and ate the corn and did not reply.

“So…” Luwin tried not to show how light-headed he was becoming from the strange… non-resolution to everything. “Where does it leave us exactly?”

“Since Stark won’t tell me anything about his pet sorcerer or whatever it is, I’ve decided to follow your judgment and _defer_ judgment until we actually know something.”

Luwin hoped he didn’t fail too badly at hiding how honoured he was that-

“Don’t push it down, boy. When you deserve to feel proud, feel proud.”

Oh…

“Work on that more.”

“Right.” The well-meaning rebuke only made Luwin feel embarrassed all over again though. “I can do that.”

“And I’m the God-King of Ib. You’re eons away from that sort of occult comprehension. We’ll work on it together.”

The occult was about pride? How had he not come across this in all his studies? “Right,” Luwin mumbled, not knowing what else to do but repeat himself. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “So what now?”

“Now we get ready for the road, what else?”

“Wait, so we just go on as normal?”

“Unfortunately,” Marwyn grunted, finishing kitting up and starting to pack the rest of his things. “Blasted highborn even had the nerve to change the terms of our private deal. Said he doesn’t trust me not to pull a runner once I get my end fulfilled. The nerve! I may not go out of my way looking for devils, but I’d never step out of my path to let one go by! Feh.” Marwyn spat a gob of red phlegm aside. It looked like a blood splatter on the white snow.

“… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Bribery,” Marwyn said dryly. “Worry over you greenhorns aside, Stark didn’t get me to come along just on the merit of his frosty personality. He somehow knew or guessed enough about me to make the deal personal.”

Luwin still had no idea what Marwyn was talking about but he was done admitting ignorance for one day.

“Half the roof of my mouth is one huge, pus-filled carbuncle,” Marwyn said, easily reading him as usual, to Luwin’s dismay. “Can barely move my tongue without smacking into it. You think I chew sourleaf because I like looking like a sothoryi blood drinker? It’s fucking painful is what it is. Sometimes I tap it, but that only works when it’s really swollen up and it needs to be a fairly thick pin to do anything, which hurts like the Stranger’s own buggering. I believe you can see the problem?”

Somehow, the notion that Marwyn suffered from such a common ailment was the hardest thing to believe out of everything.

“Not that this _dentistry_ Stark talked about is likely to be any gentler. Those tools look like something out of a Bolton’s randy fantasies, I swear.”

Wait, what? “… What’s this about House Bolton? What do you know about them?”

“Lad, I was out traveling for eight years and change. You think I didn’t walk about my backyard before I went off east? I’d never have gotten such a bug up my arse about firewater if I hadn’t visited the North. The Boltons realized long ago that coating their blades in booze makes their victims last longer before they caught the pus. A lot of things go into properly flaying a person, especially if you want to keep them alive more than their screams last. Not that I got to see or try for myself of course.”

“… That you can talk so blithely about this is absolutely horrifying.”

“And the world is better off for their passing, yes, yes. Don’t give me that look, boy! People paid in soul-crushing agony so we’d learn that dipping your knife in strong drink works something like Myrish fire, just not as well. Not until I perfected my firewater, which is actually better and I’ll have a grand old time throwing it in Myr’s face once I market it, seeing as that’s an option now. Ghoulish as some customs may be, you shouldn’t dismiss a potential avenue of progress just because the ones who stumbled upon it were sick fucks deserving to die in a fire. You may as well not extract arrowheads or amputate limbs or sew wounds shut because the ones who first figured out the make of the body got hanged as necromancers. Did you ever ask Qyburn how he earned his first link of Valyrian?”

Luwin desperately tried to keep up with every change in topic. “Should I have? All it takes is studying the known records and theory about magical practices, no?”

“That’s what I do with young and idealistic children whose sense of wonder wouldn’t survive the real world. Qyburn was almost fifty when he got the bug. Ask him why, and then ask him how he started on the path. It’s nothing like you believe.”

Was anything like he believed in this mad world? “I’ll remember to ask him.”

“Good. Well, that’s me ready,” Marwyn said, having finished packing his things. “I’m going to take apart this hut now. Unless there’s anything else that can’t wait, you should go break your fast and pack up as well.” Marwyn then began punching holes in the walls. It was its own form of training, supposedly.

“Well… there is one thing.”

“Go on then.”

“The answer is yes.”

Marwyn blinked and stopped with his arm elbow-deep in snow.

“You asked me if I still want to learn of the higher mysteries. The answer is yes. I want to learn everything you can teach me.”

“Denied.”

Understandable, he’ll just wish him a nice day and-wait, no it wasn’t! “What? But why?”

“The paths occult are walked with will, boy, not emotion. If you think I’ll mistake this emotional decision for conviction you’ve got another thing coming.”

Luwin sputtered and spluttered and whined and argued until the hut was in ruins around them.

“Enough,” Marwyn bit, spitting another gob of red.

Luwin shut up. Marwyn had never lost patience with him before. Ever.

“Were this Asshai, your attitude would get you enslaved and turned into cattle for the Houses of the Shadowbinders. You’re lucky I’m not actually an evil man and I believe enthusiasm like yours is to be cherished. But I will not accept that answer until I _know_ you choice wasn’t made under duress.”

Luwin felt his frustration fill his insides all over again. “Master, look,” Luwin said, pushing down his bubbling anger before it made him say things he’ll regret. “I know I’ve not lived up to your standards. Or anyone’s really. I fell in with the wrong crowd. I needed you to rescue me from them. I haven’t done shit on this journey. I didn’t set out to learn anything about our party. I didn’t offer to be camp healer. It didn’t occur to me that I should look after the others, Hother and Mullin had to sort everyone else out instead. I’m one of the older acolytes in this mess and one of the most educated besides, but it didn’t occur to me that I should assume any responsibility. I’m ready to stop being that person. Please,” Luwin pled. “Believe me.”

“I do, lad,” Marwyn sighed, trying to shoo the white raven off with little success. “But as nice as that is, self-awareness is just half of what you need.

“I’ve found my center.”

Marwyn stopped in surprise.

Luwin was surprised at blurting that out too. But he was even more proud at finally scoring a victory, no matter how small. “I’ve found it. It only took Lord Stark’s exercises to do it. I feel a warmth in my chest, a vibration up and down my spine and a glimmer of something behind my eyes when I breathe to a stop like he showed us. When I just stand still and focus inward.”

“Do you really?” Marwyn murmured, though his eyes were hooded with something far different than whatever Luwin had hoped to see. “If that’s true, then I’m only more convinced of my decision.”

“What? Why?” Luwin demanded. “What do you want from me?”

“Clarity and Will, Luwin.” Marwyn said as if the conversation was over, turning to kick around the blocky piles of snow his hut had once been. “Not emotion. Not even conviction. _Will_. If you ever reach the point where I need more than four words to destroy your entire system of beliefs, then I’ll consider it.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“I cannot work spells.”

The world scattered into its components pieces suddenly, then it abruptly snapped back into place and none of the pieces seemed to fit anymore despite being unchanged.

Marwyn turned to him with the gravest, darkest stare Luwin had ever seen. “Self-awareness is just one puzzle piece of several before you can make any claim of _clarity_. Awareness of the world. Awareness of others. Awareness of other’s _lack_ of awareness of themselves. You’re still so very dependent on the spoken word too, for all of this. As prone to losing your composure and questioning your own beliefs as you’ve always been. Would you like me to throw out some more mind-twisters? Parenting is emotionally manipulating your children so they don't grow up to be savages, convicts or corpses. Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go fuck himself so elegantly that he packs for the trip. Artists use lies to tell the truth while Septons use the truth to tell lies. The Iron Throne can’t find its arse without mistaking one for the other, but it still stands today because the difference between brilliance and insanity is success. I could go on and on and on, but what’s the point? Any one of these statements is enough to get you bogged down in a downward spiral of arguments and counter-arguments, none of which you’d need to make without that sudden onset of self-doubt. Perfect for a Shadowbinder’s Vessel or a sorcerer’s slave. Not so much for someone who wants to be themselves for themselves.”

Luwin heard the words and the sense in the words and knew they held a message that should make sense to someone who heard the words in that order. But whatever the purpose in that speech… it went completely over his head. His ability to care about it had completely left him, along with his ability to care about everything else after those four words that preceded it. “You’re a fraud?”

Marwyn’s wan smile was that of someone holding back the brittle mien of disappointment in a student they’d put their hopes in.

Luwin immediately wished he could take his words back. “Master, I…”

“Ask me an honest question and I'll give you an honest answer,” Marwyn said, walking to his satchel and digging through it. “If you don't want an honest answer, let me know and tell me what kind of answer you want.”

Luwin tried to find words for… something. But he couldn’t. He found himself unable to even form a thought, let alone articulate something as complicated as a question.

Their meeting ended unceremoniously, with Marwyn walking over and shoving something in Luwin’s arms that almost made him fall off his feet. It was a dark bag of… something deceptively heavy.

“People seldom care what others think. They only want to know what happens to them,” Marwyn said, sending him on his way with a gaze that was as heavy as it was unreadable. “You are not exceptional enough to be different.”

Luwin left in a daze.

It was only when his feet took him to the firepit without any conscious direction that he learned what he was given. Not through any curiosity of his own, but because of everyone else’s. All the acolytes and guards and everyone partaking of the morning meal save Marwyn and Qyburn and Lord Stark himself, wherever they were. Guard Captain Rus was standing to the side with a plate in hand and barking orders. Guardsman Tom played his lute as badly as usual. Ryben was making ribald jokes. Hother corralled Luwin in his usual manner, only to stop in surprise after divesting him of his burden. The moment the tall Northman looked inside marked the end of fireside chatter and saw everyone staring in disbelief at the long, long, long length of chain that grew to take up the entire surface of the hastily cleared serving table.

Three links in mining and the same in ravenry. Four each in warcraft, jewelcraft and architecture and engineering. Five silver for healing. Five platinum in natural sciences. Five again in smithing. Six bronze in astronomy. Six copper in history. Six antimony links for wild lore and survival. Another six in mathematics and economics. Then there were _seven_ in alchemy made of white gold and a full _ten_ of zinc for languages. That was one link more than Luwin thought you could go. High Valyrian, Old Ghiscari, Dothraki, Lhazareen, Summer Tongue, Ibbenese, Rhoynar, Old Tongue, the man must know them all and _maybe_ the Spell Langauge of Asshai, but even then it was just nine. And it couldn’t be explained through regional variation because you didn’t earn a link until you could at least get by in all sub-dialects.

“Lads,” Harmune said, sounding ill. “My humours are about to go into extreme imbalance.” The boy rushed out of their huddle and puked everything he’d just had for breakfast.

“Watch it!” snarled guardsman Rys, barely avoiding his boots getting soiled, but he didn’t do more than that. He was astounded too.

“Spank me rosy,” Ryben mumbled, for once ignoring the drama around him. “Old bastard must have gone and learned every language known to man until the world ran out of tongues. What, did he give himself a link in Trade Talk just to round up the number? How old is our oh so venerable Archmaester again?”

“Forty,” Luwin said flatly.

“We’re fucking chumps!” Hother said, squatting down on a stump disgustedly.

They really were. How many links a year did Marwyn earn? Because he’d obviously never stopped! And he’d even been out traveling for the past eight years, how much did his practical experience account for out of them? And how did he keep all that knowledge in order? Hells, did he retain even half of it? _Seventy-four links!_ And that didn’t even count the individual links in every other topic taught at the citadel, which were all there as expected of his post. Luwin wondered if even _those_ accurately reflected the man’s aptitudes and skills. He refused to believe that lone link of lead in diplomatic acumen was anything but deceptive.

When the last of their party finally assembled for their departure, there was not one eye that didn’t stare at Marwyn when the man came to retrieve his chain.

“I trust you’ve all had enough of an eyeful?” the squat man grunted as he stuffed the bag into his satchel. The valyrian steel rod on his back and the mask hanging from his belt glinted tauntingly in the morning sun. How many Valyrian steel links did Marwyn once have before he replaced them with those symbols of office? And how did he get them? Were they already there? Did he make them himself? “Don’t break your brains thinking too much about it. You’re better off asking yourselves why the hells we Archmaesters lock ourselves in our towers instead of going out and using all we know for something that’s actually useful. Pinnacles of the exceptional, hah! The pinnacle wastes of space in the entire world if you ask me.”

Luwin watched the shine of the smoky metal, then looked from rod and mask to the ring on Marwyn’s finger. The Archmaester liked to twist it when his hands weren’t otherwise busy, Luwin thought suddenly. He wondered if there was more than an idle tic to read into it. Wondered if he was mad to dwell on something so minor now.

He wondered why Marwyn suddenly decided to reveal the make of his chain, assuming it wasn’t just as a slap in Luwin’s face for so abruptly assuming the worst of him.

“Now you all listen to me,” the Archmaester said to the acolytes as if Lord Stark and his guards weren’t all within hearing distance. The white raven on his shoulder mirrored the way his gaze roamed over them. “No matter how this turns out, I’ll take care of you boys.” The man let his gaze linger half a moment longer on Tybald and Rhodry. Which would have been fine and likely passed without anyone else noticing if the two in question had been half as discrete as they were observant. “Alright?”

“I don’t want your pity,” Rhodry said.

“Then you’re a fool,” Marwyn flatly replied as if Rhodry hadn’t just screamed out that he was in a more vulnerable position than anyone else. “Pity is good and right. It shows there’s something wrong in the world that should be mended. It shows that you’ve earned the compassion of another thinking being. Pity rules the lives of millions. It’s why you’re still alive. It’s why I’m still alive.”

Rhodry looked like he wanted to say something else but Mullin’s hand on his head stopped him. For his part, Luwin wondered if Marwyn was referring to the prior night or something older.

“I’m glad that’s settled,” Marwyn said as if he hadn’t just set them up for a potential future conflict of loyalty between Lord Stark and himself. It was so easy to assume the worst of the man now, Luwin thought bitterly. “We’ll be in our new home soon. I wanted to make sure you knew to call on me when you need to. You’ve been relying on Luwin to act as spokesperson a tad much.” _Translation: Luwin is not fit to be your spokesperson anymore._ He hoped he was wrong to take it that way, but… “And Mama Umber will be there for you when I’m busy.”

Marwyn, it seemed, was so very much _not_ upset over their disastrous conversation that he freely japed with the others.

“Fuck you, Maester,” Hother muttered.

“Now that’s no way to be rising in my esteem.”

“Rising? Esteem!?” Hother thundered like a man who’d just had all his expectations upturned. “You wanna see how well I can _raise_ my case, _esteemed_ Archmaester?”

“Umber, dear, I do get off on power but you don’t have near enough to be getting on with.”

Luwin boggled. So shameless! Not that it was completely outside his usual behaviour, but if Marwyn was like this now, what kind of creature would he be once he got rid of those bad teeth and gum sores that pained him so badly?

Their departure was one of flustered faces, outraged squawks and embarrassed sputtering that only Luwin was too out of sorts to indulge in.


	22. All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (VI)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last we see of Luwin for a while. Next time, the world reacts.

## “-. 274 AC .-“

They put away their skis once they reached the Neck. Instead, they were met by a group of crannogmen who escorted them through the region on foot. Well, on snow shoes at least, though their escorts didn’t seem to need them, being so small and slight that the snow supported their weight even without that help. They looked like soundless shadows in their oilskin cloaks as they moved amidst the dense thickets. Seeing them at work, Luwin could understand why some people thought they were kin to the Children of the Forest. Especially the youngest among them, the son of their head guide who was just ten years old. Not that it was true of course. Even if Men and Children could interbreed, which all credible sources agreed they couldn’t, the blood wold have thinned so much since the Age of Heroes as to make the point moot.

At first it was less a marshland and more a boggy forest, with trees that looked half-drowned in frozen water and covered in pale fungus that glittered in the frost. The more they moved north, though, the more the foliage changed to shrubbery and slurry marsh. Luwin had passed through the region many years before, when he first travelled to the Citadel, but age and learning made it easy now to understand why the Neck could just as easily be called the Strangler. The black bog of the Neck divided the North from the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. To the west was the large forest and a peninsula containing Flint's Finger, the Flint Cliffs, and Cape Kraken, while to the east was the Bite, the long bay of eastern Westeros dividing the North from the Vale of Arryn. North of the Neck were the Barrowlands, where ancient kings up to the very First King of the First Men were said to be entombed. And to the south were the Twins, Seagard, and the Cape of Eagles in the Riverlands. The Green Fork of the Trident originated in the Neck as well.

They didn’t have to worry overmuch about some of the natural hazards, unlike any other seasons that got really troublesome for various reasons. They didn’t get harassed by midges and bloodflies or any other stinging flies, for one. They didn’t need to fear the bog waters that much either, since they’d have to break through the ice before they could drown or sink into the quicksands. But slipping on the ice was its own killer, and the place still held lizard-lions, snakes and dozens of varieties of huge plant life. They ranged from mild irritants like poison kisses, to not so mild predators that could melt the flesh off your bones. Not all of the beasts and plants hibernated or withered in cold times either, they were told. Not the whole way through. It all was quite important because they did not always stick to the Kingsroad. Or, really, the increasingly narrow causeway, as it was called there. The swamp had invaded it with every springmelt and summer floods since the Kingsroad was first built. The Reeds of Greywater Watch did what they could to maintain it, but nature did as nature willed.

Luwin imagined it was a mirror of the same process that saw a coniferous forest be steadily overrun by marshlands after the Children’s failed bid to recreate the hammer of the waters, thousands of years before. On being asked, their guide confirmed it, and the small man’s even smaller son regaled them with an in-depth lecture on the hows and whys. Quite confidently too. Despite his young age, Howland Reed already seemed to know everything about the deathtrap they unfortunately had no choice but to wade through. It explained why Lord Stark didn’t mind him playing pathfinder, despite the strange face he’d made upon the boy’s introduction.

Their progress slowed dramatically compared to their journey up to that point, but no one grumbled, especially after guardsman Bors told them what he went through after he wandered after a wisp during watch one night, on the way south. Which, the tiny crannog boy explained, was just the flash of swamp gas escaping through the bog and momentarily igniting.

“It’s all the flint stones scattered about,” little Howland told them. “They get knocked together by the burst. Long as you’re not in the middle of it when they go off, you’ll be fine.”

“Yes,” Lord Stark said with the air of one indulging an inside joke. “Mind you don’t get gaslighted.”

That was a strange word. Fitting as any other though, Luwin supposed.

They spent a whole day at Moat Cailin, which Luwin mostly slept away. Then they resumed their trek, slow and steady until they finally left the marshes and their guides behind, only then resuming their previous speed. Luwin tried to keep himself busy. Things with Marwyn were still awkward since he refused to teach him more of the Mysteries, even though the man never said Luwin couldn’t go to him for anything _else_. He’d normally have sought out new books to read or maesters to study under. But Oldtown’s libraries and lecture halls were far behind him now, and he’d grown as familiar as he was likely to get with his fellow acolytes. He approached Qyburn once, briefly, about him sharing some of his knowledge on health and healing. Instead, he found out how Qyburn earned his first Valyrian steel link.

“Once, at the Citadel, I came into an empty room and saw an empty chair,” Qyburn told him with a strange look. “Yet I knew a woman had been there, only a moment before. The cushion was dented where she'd sat, the cloth was still warm, and her scent lingered in the air. If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life?” Qyburn spread his hands. “The archmaesters did not like my thinking, but Marwyn did, and he invited me to partake of a certain brew he’d developed. Well, two really. One made from some sort of leaf, the other made of some ground crystal mixed into a brew as thick as oil but colorless as water. I’ve no words for the journey my soul undertook, and I didn’t quite get my answer as to what we leave behind when we die. Not the first time at least. What I did, however, was see into the world of things that are too small to see.”

Qyburn had come out of a magical vision as an adherent of Maester German’s much derided theory that disease was caused by tiny creatures invisible to the naked eye.

“I’ll keep my heretical views for when I can prove them, I think,” Qyburn told him wryly. “Wouldn’t want to sabotage my already flimsy odds of making the seven, you understand.”

Luwin ended up seeking out the members of their escort instead. And so he learned that Guardsman Tom was a terrible musician plucking at a lute that wasn’t his at all. It actually belonged to guardsman Rys, who’d lost some bet or other to lend him his instrument and teach him how to play it. It had not gone well at all. He found out that Guard Captain Rus was Rys’ older sibling and was possessed of a work ethic exceeded only by his sense of irony, which was responsible for Rys agreeing to that bet in the first place.

Luwin also got around to watching a training session from start to finish. It was during one of their rare, longer stops in the Barrowlands. It ended up turning into a chain of sparring matches where Mullin beat all but the most seasoned baker’s dozen in Stark’s retinue. In a row. One after another. At their own weapons. Without any rest in between.

“Others’ tits,” Bors muttered when Mullin’s exhaustion finally got him to falter against one of the veterans of the War of the Ninepenny Kings. A big guard with dark hair and salty beard called Lyndon, armed with a mace. “Is he having us on, trying to be a maester? How’d he make it so long down south without getting knighted?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Mullin had never said where he came from. Hother had once mentioned that he used to have a Stormlander accent when he first arrived in Oldtown, but Mullin never offered information or answers when asked. Luwin didn’t get the impression that there was any grand tale or tragedy behind it though.

Lord Stark had started giving Mullin some very peculiar looks too, but he was a fair bit off from actually interpreting the man’s expressions reliably. The Lord began calling on Mullin more and more often too. Called him to ski at his side just behind the biggest, burliest four men-at-arms that always had the head of the column. Luwin wondered if the lord meant to poach him for his guard force, but he doubted it. The odds of anyone establishing an institution capable of successfully competing with the Citadel were ultimately very slim. Having just a dozen or so people to start with, only two of whom were fully qualified, only cut those odds even further. None of them could be spared from the effort, no matter how talented they were at their hobby.

Well, unless Mullin suddenly decided to switch to a martial path in life, but he’d made no sounds of such a thing.

It was shaping up to be a fairly dull end to their journey, which only deprived Luwin of distractions from his anxieties. He incited horror stories around the campfire to get some form of release. Alas, that started working rather too well by the end of their long dash across the Barrowlands. Particularly when they began trading dark rumours about cults and religions and Wendamyr shared with them the darker things he’d heard about the Church of Starry Wisdom. ‘Docksite temple sacrifices’ took an all new, sinister cant then.

Lord Stark happened to be supping with the rest of them at the time, which he’d been doing a lot more of since Moat Cailin for some reason, always with someone new sat to his right. The man inquired into the history of the cult, and answering somehow ended up being Luwin’s job after Marwyn mentioned the information was probably freshest in his mind. Technically true, he’d gained his Valyriain steel link quite recently, to say nothing of his copper ones. Luwin was already regretting his grand distraction plan, but it wasn’t like he could refuse Lord Stark’s order, even if it wasn’t phrased as one.

“In the beginning, the priestly scribes of Yin declare, all the land between the Bones and the freezing desert called the Grey Waste, from the Shivering Sea to the Jade Sea, including even the great and holy isle of Leng, formed a single realm ruled by the God-on-Earth, the only begotten son of the Lion of Night and Maiden-Made-of-Light, who travelled about his domains in a palanquin carved from a single pearl and carried by a hundred queens, his wives. For ten thousand years the Great Empire of the Dawn flourished in peace and plenty under the God-on-Earth, until at last he ascended to the stars to join his forebears.

“Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries... yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth.

“When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world.

“In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.

“How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior—known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser—arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world.”

When he was done speaking, Luwin dearly hoped no one would mock him for regurgitating a book’s contents like Marwyn had openly derided everyone up to his peers for doing. Fortunately, he got his wish. Not so fortunately, their party spiralled into a discussion about history and myth and forgotten stories that probably shouldn’t have been forgotten at all, even if they were dark and sinister. The mass human sacrifice by the Children of the Forest to the weirwood trees in olden days, before the Pact and even the Hammer of the Waters that sunk the Arm of Dorne into the Narrow Sea. Garth Greenhand and the darker tales where he demanded blood sacrifice in exchange for good harvest. Nagga the sea dragon and the demon tree Ygg of Ironborn myth that gorged on human flesh before being slain by the Grey King. The mysterious race of men known as the mazemakers, who inhabited the isle of Lorath in ancient days but vanished long before the dawn of true history, leaving no trace of themselves save for their bones and the mazes they built. The Deep Ones and the sinister Old Ones they worshipped, whose oily, discordant echoes even now lingered in the great underground cities of Leng, whispered by statues of a faceless emperor with one eye shaped like a shining trapezohedron. The cult’s most holy relic, Wendamyr claimed. If it was true, it had been lost long ago.

They were but archaeological mysteries twisted by myths of savage times into stories to scare children, but even so they filled Luwin with an inexplicable sense of foreboding that persisted all the way to Castle Cerwyn. The manner of their arrival neither dispelled it nor did it provide closure. It did, however, give him something extra to worry about.

They reached Cerwyn near midnight. They were fighting exhaustion well before then, all of them from the biggest guardsman to the smallest dog pulling the sleds. Lord Stark decided to push on rather than make a final stop so close to the keep. There was no pageantry when they arrived. There was no Lord waiting in the middle of the yard to welcome them. The castle spotters only saw them when they were almost at the gates due to the blizzard that kicked off. But their party was still ushered into the great hall as soon as the grooms took charge of the dogs. The great doors had long been barred, but a side entrance was open – they’d caught the last of the day shift just as the servants were leaving for bed, and Lord Stark decided that would serve well enough. Luwin was among the last to enter, having lagged behind everyone except the rear guard on the last stretch. Skiing uphill never got easy, even when you went zig and zag, especially when your legs already felt about to come off. Still, he made it, and he welcomed the warmth, with its light, its lingering smells of food and wine, and the reed pipes playing near the far end, next to the lord’ platform. Squeezing around for a better look, Luwin was just in time to see Lord Stark gesture for them not to interrupt or disturb. Luwin was too dumbstruck to attempt such things regardless. Not by the sight of the Lord and his wife sitting with their back at the entrance. Not by the sight of their son playing a most curious set of reed pipes across the firepit from them. Or the unknown woman sitting nearby and watching the man with hooded bedroom eyes. Luwin wasn’t even taken aback by the small boy next to the singer, even though he was covered in a grey cloak with white fur lining made for a man full grown. To have such a tiny anklebiter making notes on paper whenever the lordling hit a false note should have at least surprised him, but it didn’t. No, it was the girl.

_Ambinata in siraxta_

_Cailon areuedons in nemesi_

_Satiion branon tosagiíet uo moudas_

The young girl singing in Old Tongue to the reedy tunes. Of flying spears, great fires, destiny and dark wings that beckoned in forlornness, leading sign in the sky, flock of ravens looming under the clouds.

_Exete 'os brane exete 'os_

_Etic laxsci 'os aidu laxsci 'os_

_Etic toage gariíon toage_

_Etic uregepe tunceton_

Luwin heard the words and knew the words and could even make a good guess at what they were supposed to convey in translation, but he didn’t care because all his wits had been shaken by the sight of her.

He _knew_ that girl.

Luwin stood there staring until the girl’s latest skipping twirl left her facing them and she stumbled to a halt with a squeal. “Papa!”

The boy shot out of his chair like a spinning meteor, swung his father’s great cloak above him like the Lion of Night’s own shroud, then swept it wide to catch his sister’s feet on its hem _just_ so.

Lyanna Stark faceplanted in the middle of Castle Cerwyn’s Great Hall.

“Ha!” Benjen Stark crowed. “I told you so! I _told_ you he’d be here tonight, but noooo, big sister always knows best! Well I was right!”

“I’ll murder you!”

“Gasp!” Benjen Stark ‘gasped’ and threw the Stark cloak in her face like a funeral shroud, then jumped over her when she went under. “Dad, save me!”

“Get back here you little insect!”

The little wolf pup with his little grey eyes laughed at his shrieking his sister from where he bounced around his father’s feet in his shadow.

Lord Rickard Stark lost his composure for the first time in Luwin’s memory, bursting into laughter and kneeling down to embrace his two children. Luwin had eyes for none of it. The scene stabbed at him with the worst pang of homesickness he’d ever felt in in his life. He wanted to go home, back to the Citadel with its winding roads and sphinxes and towering bookshelves and observatories. But even that was ultimately secondary. His mind’s eye turned backwards, to memory and fancy that had just proven to have been less fanciful than he ever thought.

He recognized the boy’s laughter. He recognized the girls’ face.

He’d not even set foot in Winterfell and he was already dreaming Starks.

**“-. 274 AC .-“**

That night he dreamed of stone buildings, cobbled streets and a butcher’s cart rumbling past him down a familiar river road, five piglets in the back squealing in distress. Dodging from its path, Luwin just avoided being spattered as a townswoman emptied a pail of night soil from a window overhead, only to trip on a stone out of the dream’s green glow into red sunlight. Streaks of red burned away the grey and green like a forest fire gorging on moss and fir pines. That was when the world suddenly fell from under him, or perhaps he was the one falling. Falling up into the sky as Oldtown took form around him, emerging ghostlike from the predawn gloom as winter melted into summer and sunbeams pierced the morning mists. Luwin had never seen King’s Landing, but he knew it was a daub-and-wattle city, a sprawl of mud streets, thatched roofs, and wooden hovels. Oldtown was built in stone, though, and all its streets were cobbled, down to the meanest alley. The city was never more beautiful than at break of day. Luwin used to watch it from their cell’s small window in the early hours, thinking it the grandest view he’d ever seen. It had nothing on the vista below him now, rapidly expanding to all corners of the world the higher he fell away from it. West of the Honeywine, the Guildhalls lined the bank like a row of palaces. Upriver, the domes and towers of the Citadel rose on both sides of the river, connected by stone bridges crowded with halls and houses. Downstream, below the black marble walls and arched windows of the Starry Sept, the manses of the pious clustered like children gathered round the feet of an old dowager.

And beyond, where the Honeywine widened into Whispering Sound, rose the Hightower, its beacon fires bright as wildfire against the dawn. From where it stood atop the bluffs of Battle Island, its shadow cut the city like a sword. Those born and raised in Oldtown could tell the time of day by where that shadow fell. Some claimed a man could see all the way to the Wall from the top. Perhaps that was why the Hightowers had built it so high up from the original fortress, that wide, squat labyrinth built of fused black stone. Or perhaps they just liked to rule their city from the clouds. If that was true, Luwin could well see why. The higher he got, the smaller things became until he was seeing just the sharp tops of white mountains and the grey pinpoints of castles. The land itself seemed to climb up the edges of the sky until they covered the heavens themselves, like the inside of a hollow world surrounding the sun that pulled him forward. And where there wasn’t land, there were the seas, stretching out into the distance until even they tapered out into oily black horizons, sometimes smoothly, sometimes broken through by towering black fortresses and grey wastes filled with blight. He could even see the Wall now, and then around it to the forests beyond the closer he got to the red sun high up in the center of the sky, scorching the world below with flames that grew thicker and hotter as he plummeted upward and eastward, eastward, east-

Lightning struck him suddenly. The sky was clear but the bolt still split the heavens apart like the Storm God’s own whipcord. A strong gale took him. The red haze around him was suddenly gone and he started falling back towards the ground. A distant roar sounded from the other side of the world as if screamed by an angry dragon. Then there was an eagle’s cry, clawed forelimbs snatched him out of the air in a blur of feathers, and he felt himself pulled westward and northward with impossible speed until he was suddenly launched down, plummeting towards a massive keep with square crenellations and sharp towers that stuck out like spears into the sky and which he recognized on sight.

The last thing he saw before he fell below the horizon was the Hightower. The Hightower as it was before the Targaryens, he somehow knew with the certainty of the dream. Before the Targaryens, before the Andals, before even the First Men when it wasn’t even called Hightower because it wasn’t a tower at all. Oldtown was but scattered shipyards, the Raven’s Isle was a pirate den, and the cries of newborn hatchlings reached him from the fortress labyrinth upon which roosted dragons, mighty and full grown.

Luwin came awake to the soul-deep certainty that none of what he’d dreamt had been allegory. Death was waiting for him, sitting across the pool of black water on the bone-white root of a great Heart Tree ancient beyond imagining. But even that vision was washed away under a billow of sea water taller than a hill. Luwin found himself sputtering wetly, face-down against a floor made of planks. They were laid fore and aft over beams and along carlins, their seams caulked and paid with tar. The shadows of three masts covered him, though there was no red sun looking to carry him away anywhere amidst the starry darkness of the sky. Looking up, he saw Death land cautiously on the ship’s figurehead. It was a carving shaped like three small, shy, gentle-faced creatures with their hands and feet nailed to the hull, so white he didn’t know if it was wood or bone. Then, footsteps came from behind him, stomp by stomp by stomp and Luwin realized the edges of the world were etched in the shape of a familiar trapezohedron.

“Let me be clear.” Marwyn stepped in front of him, a sentry with the mane of a lion, his rod alight with pale fire and his whole bulk armored for war. “You will not spy on those I’ve claimed. You will not enter their dreams uninvited. You will use no workings on them without their consent and _my_ consent. You will suffer these demands or you will suffer **me**.”

Death unravelled until it blended imperceptibly with the night sky and was no longer there.

Luwin awoke in the quarters he shared with his old cellmates. Waited and watched for signs this was still a dream. When he tried to roll out of his body and only rolled out of his bed, he figured this was the waking world proper, finally. He slipped on his robe, put on the slippers the servants had provided, exited with the same amount of noise everyone else made when going to the privy, then headed to Marwyn’s guest chambers as fast as he could walk.

He didn’t expect Qyburn to be the one opening the door. What was inside he expected even less. There was no glass candle out and burning, no books of ancient lore scattered about, not even a gravelly voice cussing out everyone and their forebears over whatever had offended his sensibilities this time.

Marwyn sat with his back to the far wall, cross-legged on a red velvet cushion lined with gold embroidery. His ring was on his finger, his mask covered his face, and his rod rested perfectly level across his legs. Before him was a long, wooden tray bearing a steaming kettle surrounded by delicate tableware made of white YiTish porcelain painted with fractal patterns. On one side of the kettle was a steel jar filled with white crystals, while on the left was an incense burner. Three long sticks released meandering, wiry wafts of smoke that turned the air fragrant enough as to be pungent. A few breaths were enough to make Luwin feel lightheaded. Not that he noticed. His sight was entirely claimed by the wall itself. Or, rather, what was on it. A large, looming dreamcatcher resembling the web of some great, monstrous spider. Many charms, feathers and other things hung off its myriad treads, every strand so black they seemed to eat the light.

A throat cleared behind him, wrenching Luwin out of his stupor. Turning around, he blanched. “Lord Stark!”

“Acolyte Luwin.”

“Yes, Luwin,” Marwyn said, voice almost devoid of its usual rasp. “Stop blocking the man’s way and come sit.”

Luwin quietly went where indicated, at the foot of the tray to Marwyn’s right. There was no cushion for him, but he recognized the setting from his studies of diplomacy and history so he decided to kneel rather than sit, directly on the ornate rug. It put him face to face with Qyburn who was kneeling on the Mage’s left, keeping his head down and… brewing something?

“The custom would have all of us assume seiza,” Marwyn waved at the cushion across from him, purple to his red and just as ornate. “But I know better than to ask a highborn to kneel.”

With the ghost of sleep thoroughly banished, Luwin wondered at the set-up. On the surface it seemed like the YiTyish tea ceremony, but whatever Qyburn was making was not eastern green tea, and the arrangement was only vaguely similar regardless. The thought that one could ever be well served trying to import another culture in Westeros, especially the North, was also a fool’s notion. So…

 _It’s neutral ground_ , Luwin concluded. Marwyn wasn’t acting like the petitioner here, but the one being petitioned _to_. Trying to assert dominance over a highborn of Westeros was a thoroughly fatal taboo, so Marwyn had designed a setting that maintained the degree of ceremony while making it as non-Westerosi as possible. Marwyn wasn’t demanding authority, he was offering Lord Stark an invitation to recognize the fullness of his _existing_ authority in his area of expertise.

The question was, would Lord Stark take it?

Rickard Stark waved his guard captain to stay outside and close the door. He glanced briefly at the white raven that had hounded Maryn’s every step and was now flat on its back under the perch in the corner, twitching insensately. Then the man stepped forward to take his proffered seat.

“Long ago in Braavos I met a man called Benjen,” Marwyn said, a hand over his staff and his eyes closed. “Dark hair, grey eyes, long face, twin sons not half as observant as he was of his surroundings and dealings. But when I came back from the Far East seven years later, it was he that had vanished, not his reckless, proudful get. He and his ever so farsighted nephew, never to be heard from again. In Essos at least.”

If Lord Stark felt anything, he didn’t show it. “Think you to have puzzled out my sorcerer’s identity then?”

“Oh, I’ve known since Moat Cailin.” He did? “The increasing frequency in the attempted visits and the easing of your own skinchanging made more than a few things clear. The rest had already come through in words and seemings. That all could speak more of my wit than anything else, though, so we can ask someone else their opinion if you wish.”

Luwin carefully didn’t react openly to being called upon to share the conclusion to this latest puzzle. Marwyn had only just given him the key. Was this his punishment for showing up uninvited? Or was his coming predicted after whatever that last dream had been?

“That won’t be necessary,” Stark said with a sigh.

Luwin was torn between relief and irritation at losing this chance to prove his competence, however unbidden.

“As agreed at High Heart, I’ve indulged the visitations as long as it was just me.” The Mage opened his eyes. They were like bottomless pits of black behind the gleaming mask, pupils so wide there may as well be no iris around them at all. “You very carefully didn’t vow to forbid or command him anything. Nonetheless, his trespass leaves us at somewhat of an impasse, if you follow me. One he is wise not to test me on. I may not be able to work spells, but in dreams I am _mighty_. And it’s been years since I found a working I could not unravel.”

“I will not apologise for putting you to test.”

“You may wish to apologise to him then. Anyone else would have drained him dry with that wound of his.”

Lord Stark did not reply.

“I’m honestly shocked he can skinchange at all, let alone cast his Thought so far from his Shape.” Marwyn mused, not at all idly. “For a time I’d assumed the laughing pup was his fylgja, but it turns out it’s not part of him at all.” Fylgja. Old Tongue for _follower_ , but in this case used to denote the attendant spirit of a person. Their totem. Marwyn had just implied Stark’s sorcerer had somehow been deprived of his. Rather violently too, if the wound was as severe as he implied. Whatever it was. “You should be very grateful to whatever forebear bequeathed his hamingja unto you. Whatever it’s been doing, that One-Eyed Raven is the only thing explaining why you’re not drowning in miscreants.” Hamingja. _Fortune_. The personal entity that could be split off and bequeathed on another person. In some traditions at least. “Well, that and whatever it was that asserted your will upon these lands. The difference is _stark_ compared to when I was here previously. For that you have my sincerest congratulations. There is power in claim, and danger in infringing upon it as well. Rather like border disputes. That, at least, he and you both seem to afford the caution it deserves. There’s certainly been no news from King’s Landing about horses suddenly going crazy and trampling anyone important.”

Lord Stark’s hands clenched into fists atop his knees.

“Did you know Starks with any inkling of magic tend to disappear off the face of the earth? Across the sea at least.” Marwyn lifted his rod from his lap and propped it against the web of dreams at his back. “It’s good I got here first.”

Lord Rickard Stark beheld the man before him, eyes like chips of ice. “What do you want?”

“I want to know you are the ruler, not the ruled.”

“Is that so?” Lord Rickard seemed nonplussed. Seemed. “Is that it?”

“Well, I’d also like a patch in that glass garden of yours to grow some raspberry jam trees. I’d prefer acuminata or mimosa, maybe some koa eventually, but I’m willing to settle for what’s more expedient for now.” Marwyn lifted the lid from the kettle. Inside wasn’t any tea Luwin had ever seen, but a hot, thick, leafy brew of smell so strong that it made Luwin shiver. “There is a hard limit on what words can convey,” Marwyn poured one cup and then another. “Those with weak selves can be made to believe anything by them, but I am not so suggestible and neither are you.”

Across the room, Qyburn set down the second cup of clear oil he’d made from that crushed crystal and quietly stood to leave.

“You words say much,” Lord Stark said eventually. “Those you don’t voice say even more.”

“I suppose you could also behead me,” Marwyn mused. The idle tone made a sinister combination with the black void beyond the proverbial door to his soul. “Banish me perhaps, if you don’t feel quite murderous enough for that. At the least you may have to leave me behind. Actively shielding is one thing, creating lasting defences around the selves of those with no occult power of their own is quite thoroughly impossible as things currently stand. I won’t move from this spot willingly. Not without _your_ guarantee that he won’t infringe on my charges again.”

Lord Stark beheld Marwyn, for a time. “I begin to understand why you vex him so.”

“No,” Marwyn said, utterly certain. “You do not.”

The nobleman blinked in surprise, but did not grow wroth. “Perhaps not.”

“Quite so,” Marwyn agreed, satisfied. “I take it he’s rather confused.”

“… Increasingly so the more he tries to dream with you,” the other man admitted. “He only lost time this way once before. I don’t suppose you will provide an explanation?”

“I could.” Marwyn picked up the two cups and held one out. “Or you could see for yourself.”

Qyburn quietly nudged Luwin from behind and ushered him out. The last thing he saw before the door closed was Lord Stark reaching out to accept the offering.

Luwin wasn’t told what Marwyn and Lord Stark saw or discussed, but their party spent one whole day and extra night in Cerwyn instead of leaving that same morning as had been the plan. It left him and the rest rather at loose ends, but he didn’t mind. Even if it _was_ rather bemusing when little Lady Lyanna came over and declared him to be her chaperone for the rest of their stay.

“Old Man Rob says I need one but his picks are all boring.”

The real reason was that Benjen Stark had ‘called dibs’ on Luwin so Lyanna resolved to snatch him first as revenge. On finding out during noon meal, the boy sulked most adorably. Then came the evening feast and Benjan Stark proceeded to mock his sister loudly and openly for not being able to win at anything without cheating. It started a sibling’s row that somehow ended with Lyanna Stark vowing to ‘prove’ her worth by ‘winning at horror stories forever.’

What strange turns of phrase these highborn children used.

“Some say the Green Emperor still lives, forever lost to time and memory in the Morning Mountains,” Lyanna Stark finished her tale, making a brave bid at leaning in such a way that her face was cast in shadow. “They say he lingers between life and death, beset on all sides in the city of corpses that lies where the river of ash runs howling through a narrow cleft in the mountains, between towering cliffs so steep and close that the dark waters never see the sun. Some say he’s still there, alive out of spite for those he taught and raised, who turned their backs on him and flew across seas and mountains to build their own empire out of his legacy, one which they wouldn’t have to share. Perhaps he still wallows there, skulking between the caves that pockmark the cliffs where demons and dragons and worse make their lairs, more hideous and twisted the deeper in you go into the never ending darkness at the shadow’s heart.”

The gathered menagerie of children ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ appreciatively, even Rhodry who’d been swept into the little lady’s groove somehow. For a girl of seven years, Lyanna Stark knew many big words. Luwin wished Lord Stark the best of luck when she tried to abscond with the mummers in a year or three.

He looked to the side where Qyburn was rapidly recording everything on the latest sheet of the surprisingly high-quality paper the North seemed to have in abundance. “Having fun, maester?”

“Most definitely,” Qyburn said happily, murmuring under his breath about myths and mountains and Asshai-by-the-Shadow. “The mouth of babes has ever been a most precious treasure trove of information. I hope to meet this Old Nan soon.”

Luwin didn’t begrudge Qyburn’s feeling of vindication. He’d been the only one who _didn’t_ take offence when Lyanna Stark walked over and declared him their chronicler on account of being the only grownup ‘creepy enough.’

“Old Nan, Old Shmam!” Lyanna Stark tsked. “This story’s got nothing to do with her, it’s all me!”

“Your pony, more like,” Benjen muttered, leading to yet another chase up and down the main hall.

It was just the first of several ‘sinister’ tales, but Luwin’s sleep that night was undisturbed and Death did not haunt him again.

**“-. 274 AC .-“**

Winterfell was an absolutely massive mountain of a castle. That much Luwin recalled despite the age he’d been when he was sent to become a maester. Any memory blanks had long since been filled via reading and hearsay as well. The ancient seat of House Stark was by all accounts a city unto itself, with an outer wall eighty feet high, an inner wall one hundred feet high, and a wide moat between them. The complex was a rugged, solid thing with square crenellations all along its rims, great octagonal towers with hanging turrets, and high-angled roofs covered in ironwood shingles that stabbed the sky like black icicles. Inside, beyond the two walls and the first of six wards, was the Great Keep, a monolithic castle complex all on its own, with off-shoots and walls and gatehouses. It was connected by a covered bridge to the armory, a keep in its own right, while on the other side was the Great Hall, which was said to hold eight long rows of trestle tables with room for five hundred people on the ground floor alone. The inner castle also played host to the Library Tower, where Luwin may end up making his home if Marwyn’s predictions proved true. He wondered what it would be like. He only knew it had an outer staircase and a hanging bridge connecting it to the Great Keep like only the armory boasted.

That all wasn’t even touching on the many other walls, towers, turrets and bridges hanging in the air, to say nothing of the Godswood, or the ancient shell keep where the Kings of Winter once resided, with its shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles and inner ward and the Broken Tower looming tall and forbidding.

Calling Wintertown a ‘town’ was a misnomer also, being instead a full city bigger than all others in the North save White Harbor, which it more than matched in winter and fall. Winterfell and Wintertown didn’t come close to the scale of Oldtown even together, in size or population, but Luwin recalled enough of to know it beat King’s Landing in most everything else. Far from being a den of filth and mud with slums and shanty towns every other alley, Wintertown instead had rows of small and neat houses built of log and undressed stone. Its streets could be muddy when there was no cold to freeze the ground as solid as the bone in your body, but they were fairly level and done in packed gravel here and there, where there would otherwise be particular risk of getting bogged or slipping. Finally, near Winterfell's main gatehouse was the main market square, full of wooden stalls for produce and goods and a well at its center, near the local inn and alehouse. From what Luwin remembered, it was called The Smoking Log.

All told, Luwin thought he knew what to expect of the place. He was even ready for Lord Stark to take the circuitous route that would see them avoid Wintertown entirely, to enter Winterfell from the Hunter's Gate instead of the main one.

That assumption didn’t survive past the kingsroad.

The first thing they saw was the smoke. It rose in great pillars all along the southern edge of Wintertown, which seemed to have grown a whole extra circle of roads, stalls and workshops. It looked like construction on a whole new city ward had been started, one that surrounded half the town and curled eastward around the great hill. Its purpose was obvious from the edifices and craftworks already there. A fresh wall made of some strange, fused grey stone was being raised in place of the wooden one already there, to separate it from the rest of the surprisingly active city. Great furnaces as tall as houses ate coal by the shovel load and billowed smoke into the sky. Large shingled barns sheltered great boiling vats of something or other. Long arched canopies ate wood one whole trunk at a time, only to disgorge perfectly square beams or planks finer than anything he’d ever seen. As they got closer, Luwin could see mules tied in groups to spinning pillars. Whatever they did wasn’t turning grindstones though. He could hear a long, sharp keen coming from within. The making of charcoal seemed to have at some point become its own industry also.

There was a lot of extra land marked for further expansion as well, by a wooden palisade that bordered an area big enough to be called a ward on its own. Even that space wasn’t empty, having amassed a truly staggering supply of fresh timber that was even now added to by long-suffering aurochs and their loudly bellowing lumberjacks. And surrounding even that, all around the outskirts, were piles and piles of limestone and granite and many other types of stone, gravel and sand carted in from far-off places.

They stopped and took off their skis the moment they were within the outer perimeter. The roads had been cleared of snow almost completely just by foot traffic, and any ice had long since been sprinkled with sand. The sled houses were also emptied and sent on ahead, after which they proceeded on foot, watched and saluted respectfully by people wearing thick gloves and strange, hard hats of iron or ironwood. They were all eager to pay their respects and even more eager to get back to work the moment Lord Stark acknowledged them.

The new ward proved to be a fair bit farther away from Wintertown proper than it seemed at first glance. Luwin approved of the precaution but decided it was probably unnecessary, noise aside. The pattern of the winds was almost ideal for dispersing the smog away from the rest of the settlement, and Winterfell itself was higher up than the cloud of smoke and ash could actually lift. Eight thousand years later and Bran the Builder’s choice of construction site was still proving lucrative in new ways.

Once they were in the town proper, Luwin decided to go and ask his sudden bevy of questions since no one else seemed inclined to. Fortunately, his escorts proved quite willing to answer. Guardsmen Tom and Bors in particular were very eager to boast about their home.

Luwin tried not to feel too staggered at their answers.

House Stark now made paper. And glass. And had established something called _mass production_ , where they made iron at such absurd rates that there weren’t enough blacksmitsh to keep up with. Arms, armor, iron tools at prices so low that commonners might be able to afford them without having to pool their coin, all were being made at increasing rates even as the standing orders grew and grew in number. Winterfell had even let word get out about all-new farming ways and _machines_ that would be available come spring. And because that all wasn’t enough, some no-name lumberjack was no longer a non-name at all because he’d stumbled over whatever Bran the Builder had used to make the Wall. Winterstone. But that apparently wasn’t enough for one year, because someone, _somehow_ managed to come up with summerstone to go with it. A fused grey stone made from sand, gravel and baked lime mixed in a slurry and poured into all sorts of shapes and sizes. Walls, foundations, sewers, aqueducts and even the road Luwin found himself traveling up right now. One of two, the other being in the Kyln itself, as the ward was called.

“They’ll be ruined when spring comes and the ground softens, or so it’s said,” Bors told him. “But the Steward figured summerstone needed testing, and meanwhile the other work would go quicker. When the ground’s not frozen enough to break your back digging it, they’ll redo it properly, we’re told. New sewers too. Underground ones.”

“Nobody’s been able to quicken steel making yet though, least not like the blast furnace,” Tom said, winking at him. “That’s a job for you lot, I figure.”

“How is all of this funded?” Luwin couldn’t help but wonder. “Domestic savings are one thing, but some hefty starting funds would have been needed for all of this.”

“I figured it was all the coin saved off stuff we used to buy from the southrons?” Bors said uncertainly. Luwin had forgotten for a moment who he was talking to. The man wasn’t even literate.

“Might be the ice trade too,” Tom shrugged.

“Ice trade?” Hother pounced before he could.

“Methinks, at least. Turns out it’s already damn warm down in Dorne and Lys, and they’ll pay through the nose for a cool drink. Keeps food from spoiling too.”

“Not to mention what ice cubes can get up to between the sheets,” Bors muttered.

“Selling ice,” Hother muttered. “What a crazy idea. Pa oughta love it.”

“And not one whiff of magic in sight,” Marwyn murmured low enough that only Luwin heard.

Traversing Wintertown was its own experience, with its sturdy homes, the street bereft of the mud of its past, and full houses everywhere Luwin looked. He counted many more buildings with business signs over their windows compared to what he remembered too. They each had notice boards next to the doors, instead of there just being one large one in the town square. Paper sheets with various drawings and writings were nailed to them most everywhere he looked. It gave a sense of permanency to Wintertown that wasn’t there before. One sign in particular made him stare, above the door to a building twice as long as it used to be. It had been partly rebuilt to merge with the neighbor’s house. Luwys & Hus. His father had built up their business? Even had a partner? One that wasn’t even a smith! Thank the gods this wasn’t the south or the guilds would have killed them both.

How many people were planning to stay when spring came? How much work was there to be had in winter that they could afford it? Weren’t four fifths of the winter population farmers? Something must have already changed in the North for such a major shift in smallfolk prospects. Many of them were out and about even as they passed, especially the children. They were out in droves, loitering, running, gawking and playing some kind of game with paper cards. All of which might have been borne if not for the flying kites and paper ‘airplanes’ that brought half of them acolytes to a stop and threatened to send the other half into the sort of inventor’s fugue mentioned only in myth.

“Don’t you all stop and stare,” Marwyn nudged Luwin forward. “There’ll be time for that later.”

It didn’t help.

They reached the market soon after, right at the mouth of Winterfell’s main gate. It was full of people peddling arms, armor, tools, trinkets, toys, jewels, _backscratchers_ , hair combs, hair _brushes_ , soaps, _scented_ soaps (not to be confused with _hair_ soaps, the woman insisted) and something called _toothpaste_ which Marwyn broke ranks to go and buy three different jars of on the spot (along with a _toothbrush_ the carver didn’t even have to insist he get with it). Tools and parts for all sorts of work were on sale as well. Accessories that both looked pretty and had a practical purpose. There were clasps and buckles Luwin had never seen, treaded nails that made him think of Marwyn’s glass candle, those safety pins were mighty clever too. And the paper. Paper was everywhere. Sheets, stacks books and journals, figurines and toys folded in many shapes and patterns, and garlands painted in bright colors for children to run with and tie to their kites to flutter in the wind.

The throng of people parted before them, but the sights didn’t. Neither did the smells. Not of sweat or smoke or metal, but of food. So much of it that it made Luwin wonder how packed the Smoking Log had to be for there to still be so much business out in the cold. There were stalls and hawkers and wheeled carts stocking up on meals to go. For the workers, they said. Some of the dishes, Luwin had never seen before. Triangular slices of flatbread called wedge pies, baked with cheese and sauce and topped with steamed greens and meat cuts. Apples and raisins candied in maple syrup, an all-new type of sugar made from sap _._ And then there were the ‘little brans’ or “brannies.” Meat, cheese or some other filling stuffed between two slices of bread. They apparently got their name from their inventor, who happened to be Lord Stark’s son of all people. Maybe not a lackwit after all.

“All that’s missing is some good new drink,” Marwyn pondered, looking mighty thoughtful. “I’m going to be rich!”

Finally, far off on the highest point of the hill still outside Winterfell, half-way between Wintertown and the Hunter’s Gate, was the Water Titan.

This time, guardsman Rys gave the story. About a year past, the wintering youth of Wintertown had banded together in an attempt to make the biggest snowman in history. The effort grew increasingly ambitious and convoluted until it was more wood than snow and hollow on the inside. It ended up collapsing in a storm at some point into the second month of the year. But it only galvanized the youth to make a new one but _better_. So much so that they ended up asking their parents for guidance and advice. Combine that with winter-induced idleness, plus news from the keep that Lady Lyarra had fallen ill and House Stark could use a mood lift, and the effort snowballed rapidly into a serious building project. Then it somehow mixed with incipient plans for a water tower meant to deliver water directly to businesses and homes. Now, the skeleton of what would one day be a grand construction stood almost as tall as the outer wall itself. Craft masters had started using it as Wintertown’s own journeyman challenge for everyone who studied any sort of trade under them.

Water piping. Yet another one of Bran the Builder’s crafts at play. Luwin wouldn’t be surprised if the water tower plans included hot pipes as a buffer around the main tank, to prevent it from freezing in winter. He voiced the idea to Marwyn, who seemed to approve of his line of thought, if not the thought itself.

“We’ll strap some black steel to you yet. Not around the tank itself, that would be structurally unsound and redundant. Around the riser though, yes, perhaps pipes of hot springs water in a spiral, though digging under the moat and the walls to tap it might be impractical. Still, a boiler can serve in a pinch, and I know how to make some decent heat insulators,” the Mage mused. “If they build the titan to look lifelike, that’ll make for plenty of room to hide the workings. Won’t work as is though. I can spot four weak joints in the framework even from here. Next big blizzard will crash it. Which they seem to expect, seeing as there’s nothing but scaffolding within falling distance. We’ll have to redesign it from the ground up. Still, not a bad way to kill time for a bunch of tradesmen and their brood. I bet Lord Stark indulged it for the lessons learnt. He’ll be commissioning one inside Winterfell proper if he hasn’t already, mark my words. That’ll be our job too, I reckon.”

Rather dangerous, Luwin thought, but who was he to judge anyone when it came to that? He’d risk danger too, if it led to something even half as inspiring as all this.

The Gatehouse of Winterfell was quite possibly the most defensible man-made fortification in the Seven Kingdoms, with many layers of battlements, especially ramparts and arrow loops overlooking the main entrance. Since Winterfell had two walls with a moat in between, that meant a secondary gatehouse behind the first, connected by two draw bridges, each able to be raised. Looking up, Luwin saw no secondary line of battlements facing the inside anywhere on the walls. He approved. It would ensure invaders would not find their position defensible even if they did make it to the top. The people on the inner towers would be able to shoot them dead with impunity, and the collapsible bridges would enable defenders to fall back and regroup. Each section of wall was protected by towers too, making it all but impossible to conquer the castle without capturing every consecutive wall section. Bloody business, to say the least.

It was near noon when they entered the inner castle. Luwin looked ahead, searching with his eyes for their mysterious sorcerer. The way Marwyn spoke of Benjen the Elder, he’d be a man full grown bearing Stark looks, possibly with a son or two in tow. He supposed it wasn’t _impossible_ that they were going to find someone else. A hedge witch, a Warlock of Qarth, a Red Priest even, considering the red sun Luwin kept dreaming about. Maybe it was Child of the Forest straight from the Age of Heroes like he initially thought too, but what were the odds of that?

Not good, it turned out. None of his assumptions proved accurate.

“Welcome home, father. Winterfell is yours. I’ve prepared bread and salt for our guests to bide under, until the issue of policy and charters is settled. Also, mother is with child, so there’s that.”

Brandon Stark was Rickard Stark in miniature, out to do his duty in the cold even though he was tired, grumpy and looking for all the world like he had better places to be.

“Thank you, son,” Lord Stark said, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder briefly but showing no more affection that that. “We’ll talk inside.”

How cold. The man had been so gladsome with his other two children.

They ate the bread and salt and then were shown by the castle steward – one Annard Poole – to the upper floors of the Great Hall, where they’d be hosted until their permanent lodgings were ready. Very good quarters fit for nobles. Lord Stark really was treating them as investments.

To Luwin’s surprise, he beat Qyburn and Marwyn both in asking after the Lady’s health and how soon they could get to work. To their vast reassurance, their suspicions were proven correct that Lyarra Stark’s condition had been overstated. Unfortunately, that was as far as it went. While the Lady wasn’t dying right that moment, she was quite far along to being wholly bedridden due to her increasing pains and bouts of weakness.

The steward left them and returned after they’d chosen their respective chambers – they each for one of their own! – then led them back out onto the grounds and to the northernmost, oldest past of the keep.

“This will be your headquarters. Our builders have already gone over it, and ratters have been sent to clear it and the tower of most of the vermin. Nonetheless, Lord Stark expects you will prefer to do your own assessment and redesign. He will provide a considerable largesse for the renovations, but his ultimate wish is for you and whatever organisation you establish to become self-sufficient. He expects a preliminary plan by moon’s end. Naturally, this will double as a test to prove your competence. My son Vayon will attend to you from here on, but I must return to my duties. Good luck.”

Luwin was not the only one who boggled at that news. A long time ago, decades years before Lord Rikard Stark had been born, a lightning strike had set afire the Broken Tower afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt. Now they were being asked to rebuild it. And they were getting the First Keep all to themselves.

By the Gods, Lord Stark was really serious about this.

Luwin didn’t know if he should be more excited or terrified.

Marwyn called on Hother to assist and quickly had the rest of them organised. From there, they set off to survey the grounds while the Mage and Mother Hen supervised and recorded their findings. They worked all through noon and past, snacking on little brans sent for by Vayon when they got hungry. They didn’t even have to mention it, the young man seemed used to anticipating things like that. They were barely finished with the preliminary inspection of the grounds and the keep’s ground floor when a runner came with the call for dinner. Before that, though, they were shown to the hot baths to clean and refresh themselves, unless there was anything else they needed?

“Actually, yes,” Marwyn decided, using some contraption on the side of the stationery tray to drill holes into the papers they’d written. He then used one of the rings in the bottom drawer to clip them together and held them for Luwin to take. “Take these to Lord Stark, unless he only receives his own appointments?”

The question was directed at Vayon, who shrugged. “He can come with me and I can ask. Either he gets in or I get him back to you lot.”

“That will work fine.”

That was how Luwin ended up being the first Northern maester (to be) to see Lord Stark’s solar from the inside. A large room that took up almost the entire top floor of the First Keep’s summit. It was well lit from large windows on all four walls and furnished with solid furniture, cherry for the tables, oak for the bookshelves, ironwood for the desk and door. Luwin might have paid more interest to the interior if not for the effort he suddenly had to expend not to gawk like an imbecile.

“I understand you have something for me?” Lord Stark asked as if there was nothing out of the ordinary.

“… Yes, my Lord,” Luwin approached and held out the papers, doing his best to ignore the curled up figure of Brandon Stark sleeping soundly in his father’s lap. The great sword Ice was on the man’s back, its strap keeping the lad securely in place. “Preliminary assessment of the grounds. The Archmaester would like to know if you have any particular preferences on record keeping.”

“I see. You may sit while I go over this.”

Luwin accepted the seat – not designed to make someone feel small or unimportant, he noted – and made his best bid at discretion. It was hard though. The child lord looked so different from earlier, the frown and tension gone even if the bags under his eyes hadn’t quite started fading. He looked like a proper child rather than a short adult. Luwin decided to request the chance to check his health as soon as possible. For a lad of eleven, he seemed far too short. Hopefully he was just a late bloomer, but better not to risk it in case his diet needed changing.

The boy stirred half-way through his father’s reading, yawned, slipped off his father and went to the privy, acting like he didn’t even notice Luwin was there. When he came back, though, he wandered over and stared at him.

Luwin quickly felt awkwardness set in. “… Hello.”

“You’re not here to murder me too, are you?”

Luwin gaped. “What? No!” He didn’t know if he should be more worried or affronted.

Brandon Stark looked at him for a while longer. “… I thought you’d be older.” Then he walked back behind the desk, climbed up his father, nestled his head next to the man’s heart and promptly went back to sleep.

Lord Rickard only paid his son as much mind as it took to secure Ice’s strap under the boy’s elbow so that he had a comfortable grip on his beard. To Luwin he didn’t spare any glance at all, instead using a pen to make annotations.

Finally, Rickard Stark put the pen down and slid the stack of papers for Luwin to take. “It all seems in order, save for the accounting. I will have Annard instruct you in the use of double-entry bookkeeping. Otherwise, I expect to be consulted before you settle on any policy or vows. Especially celibacy, I want none of that.”

That was a strange thing to go out of your way to mention. “May I ask why?”

“Because the vows clearly didn’t work to curtail the Citadel’s ambition and I believe that genius seed of yours should spread as far as possible.”

Lord Stark had designs on his sex life. Luwin had no idea what to feel about that.

“Vayon will lead you to back to your fellows. If you hurry, there should still be enough time to bathe and refresh yourself before the feast.”

There was indeed, and the water was pleasantly hot and abundant after so much time on the road. But the feast could barely be called a feast, being so quiet. The Lord and his wife were absent, the arrival of so many different healers seemed to cast a heretofore unseen light upon the seriousness of the Lady’s sickness, and there were no young Starks to cause laughter and mischief.

When morning came, they gathered in the common room to wait. Soon, a servant came to fetch them for the morning meal, which they shared in the Great Hall with the steward and the rest of Winterfell’s upper staff, though the Starks were noticeably absent once again. Finally, though, they were led to meet the man they’d work with on medicine at long last.

The room was large, with individual desks, work tables covered in various devices and sketches along three of the walls, and a large ironwood blackboard on the fourth, on which an entire process was written, half distillation, half alchemy from what Luwin could tell at a glance.

Then a small flock of ravens flew through the open windows, each one bringing forth a gift for each of them, name tags of polished weirwood scribed with their names. The spectacle made Luwin miss the entrance of their ‘sorcerer’ completely.

“Let me get all the important stuff out of the way so we can get to work. Humours are complete dogshit. Maester German was right about everything. Until one of you designs a farseer that can see small instead of far, you’ll have to take my word for it that the process on this blackboard works for what I have in mind. I saw it in my visions. In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real.” The white mist cleared from the boy’s eyes as the ravens left. “Will that be a problem?

Brandon Stark looked like he was defined by everything he didn’t want to be. He looked old but didn’t want to be. He looked tired but didn’t want to be. He looked stressed when he wanted to be running and climbing up and down the castle. He looked like a child who didn’t want to have needed his father to break the spine of the wold’s oldest continuous institution just so he could finally grasp the chance to heal his mother and… and Luwin really shouldn’t be getting so much information just from looking at him.

“No,” Marwyn finally replied, fascinated and sage-like and his voice banished the strange mood that Luwin had fallen under with just a word. “That won’t be a problem at all.”

Brandon Stark. Brandon Stark was the healer. The failed alchemist. Brandon Stark was the _sorcerer_.

… Marwyn had given him the wrong puzzle key!

It was a good thing he ended up being so superfluous because he wasn’t useful for much of anything that day, that’s how furious he was. At Marwyn. At the situation. At his penchant for puzzle-making that betrayed him. At himself.

Qyburn cracked the process in two days, made the first batch of medicine in two weeks, figured out how to distill it in just one day with Marwyn’s help, then came one extra month of work by all of them to set up a relatively reliable manufacturing process for deployment. It could have been much longer, but Lord Brandon had been working on the mold cultures for years and had several different cellars full to the brim with the right strain months before their lone predecessor showed himself a turncoat. Qyburn was sure the Lady could be prescribed the new treatment immediately, but Lord Brandon insisted they first test effectiveness and doses on a few well-paid volunteers. It worked out fine and led to the first witnessed case of Brandon Stark laughing when the whores of Wintertown found a new god in Qyburn for creating a way to heal the clap.

Luwin wasn’t overmuch involved in most of it, being too busy going to meet the Lady and taking charge of her healthcare. He didn’t begrudge it though, since he’d only have ended up feeling as useless as everyone else there. Qyburn really was a whole world beyond all of them.

Somehow, though, Luwin still ended up Maester of Winterfell.

Considering what all had happened in the lead-up to it, though, it was probably for the best.


	23. Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (Kevan)

**“-. 274 AC .-“**

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

By the King.

Aerys Targaryen, the Second of His Name, by the grace of the Old Gods and New Gods, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

Having been heretofore informed of despicable assassination, subornation, line theft, and line extinction conspiracies perpetrated by the Order of Maesters against Most Noble personages of the Realm, and following the Crown’s own verification of these allegations with all due tenacity and diligence, the Iron Throne hereby issues the following proclamation.

Firstly. Grand Maester Pycelle, having confessed to the murder by poison of King Jaehaerys II Targaryen, as well as the murders, similarly by poison or negligence, of Princess Shaena Targaryen, Prince Daeron Targaryen, Prince Daenor Targaryen, Prince Aegon Targaryen, and Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen, has been found guilty of high treason against the Iron Throne. He is hereby sentenced to death by fire, to be carried out in the Great Square of King’s Landing within a moonturn’s time.

Secondly. Pending verification of allegations of conspiracy levelled against the Citadel Conclave by a Warden of the Realm and a High Lord Declarant, the post of Grand Maester is hereby suspended.

Thirdly. Rickard of the House Stark, Lord Paramount and Warden of the North, who single-handedly uncovered and informed the Crown of these most heinous plots at great personal cost, is to be rewarded as follows:

  1. A permanent exemption for the city of White Harbour from all Crown tariffs on imports.
  2. Suspension of all taxes paid by the North for the remainder of the current winter, as well as a number of years thereafter equalling the full length of this same season.
  3. A public commendation by Himself the King, to be given at Lord Stark’s pleasure if and when he may choose to visit the capital in future.



Finally. Leyton of the House Hightower, in his role as Lord Defender of the Citadel and Head of House Hightower, is hereby summoned to King’s Landing, that he may give account of House Hightower’s independent investigation into these matters, or any other actions perpetrated by the Order of Maesters, or other parties, that may or may not have proven injurious towards the Seven Kingdoms, House Targaryen, or its vassal lords.

Thus ends this Royal Proclamation, given in the Great Hall of the Red Keep on the First Day of the Second Week of the First Moon of 274 AC, the twelfth year of His Grace’s Reign.

Long Live the King.

_Written in the hand of Lord Symon Staunton, Master of Laws._

_Witnessed by Lord Qarlton Chelstead, Master of Coin, and Ser Harlan Grandison, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard._

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

**KEVAN**

Kevan Lannister dropped the transcript next to the signed confession of the late Maester Creylen and carefully thought over what he was going to say. “It seems our dear cousin wasn’t exaggerating after all.”

Genna scoffed from where she’d been stress-knitting since well before Kevan had entered the solar. “I _told_ you he was understating things, if anything. Honestly, why send the man to the Citadel if you’re just going to assume he’s too much of a lackwit to act as our ear there?”

“Don’t pretend you believed it any more than we, dear sister,” Tygett growled from where he stood near the door. His brother stood as stiffly as he did when he first came in, hand on the hilt of his sword. “You didn’t think Hightower would butcher his precious Citadel any more than we did.”

“I’m surprised any of his ravens reached our eyes at all,” Gerion scoffed from where he lounged in the chair beneath the bookcase. “Anyone else and it could make one wonder if maybe our late maester _wasn’t_ a no good traitor.”

Kevan had to force himself to stop wringing his hands. “I’m more interested in what the royal decree says.” He hoped someone would accept the change in topic. Questioning the confession even obliquely was _not_ a field of caltrops he wanted to wade in.

“You mean what it doesn’t say,” Gerion’s customary smirk seemed to have curdled on his face over the past few days. “No actual summons for Stark. No condemnation for Hightower. Missive witnessed by Lord Commander _Harlan Grandison_.”

“Stark has a dying wife to tend,” Genna‘s needles went click click click. “Even a dragon will know better than to keep the wolf away from his den right now.”

“Will he really? Or maybe he doesn’t want to risk Stark breaking something important in King’s Landing,” Gerion teetered on the back legs of his chair precariously. “If I had to live there I’d be worried too. He _broke the Citadel_. No, he got the high and mighty Hightower to do it. Gods, I still can’t believe it.”

“Hightower must have managed to get a raven of his own to King’s Landing before Pycelle gave his confession,” Kevan surmised.

“Not like anything else makes sense,” Gerion muttered. “Whatever happened to the White Bull is what I want to know.”

“What else?” Tygett grunted. “If the king is smart he’s holding him hostage.”

“He just tortured the poor Grand Maester,” Gerion drawled. “Mighty fine scapegoating work there. Who’s to say he’s not putting Hightower through the same?”

Kevan didn’t disagree but someone had to be the voice of sanity. “Gerold Hightower is his most loyal Kingsguard.”

“Who knows what madness seized him in his grief?” Genna murmured. “If the King wants someone to blame, he’ll get it.”

“Especially if he really means to have the good Grand Maester live to see his burning day. If his blood is up, he might need a distraction.”

That was almost seditious, so Kevan had to intervene again. “That’s enough out of you, brother. Speculating will do us no good. If you’re going to badmouth the king, do it on your own time, in your own company.”

“I’m only saying what we’re all thinking.”

Left unsaid was that a man will admit to anything under torture.

“Brothers. Sister.” Tywin finally spoke. He’d been standing near the window all that time. With the way the afternoon light cascaded over him, he looked like statue made of gold and marble. “I am emotionally compromised. Advise me.”

Kevan drew a blank. Another thing left unsaid was that late maester Creylen had also admitted to everything under torture. Everything and more and nothing and anything until he could no longer croak any sound at all. Kevan had read and re-read his signed confession and his only conclusion was that there was no conclusion. It was enough to make him feel as unbalanced as he was angry at that possibility that… that he’d… Joanna and Tywin. Joanna and the King. Joanna’s children. Her dismissal from court by the queen. The admissions and claims were so inconsistent and plentiful and conflicting and _spiteful_ by the end… Kevan couldn’t find even one that didn’t have another casting it into doubt. The torturer had gone well beyond what the old man could take. And Kevan couldn’t even come out and say it. Tywin had been there for all of it. To question the torture and its result was to question _him_. If Kevan lost even his paltry ability to mediate between his siblings-

“Give me Tyrion.”

Kevan suddenly felt like the living embodiment of their sigil was breathing down his neck.

Tywin slowly turned from the window, face casting into shadow as he did. Like gangue. “You dare.” Ground the Lord of the West at their youngest sibling. “You would insinuate I’d do any harm to Joanna’s blood.”

“A Lannister always pays his debts,” Gerion said, ignoring how Tywin didn’t acknowledge Tyrion as _his_ blood with all the fearlessness of someone who’d long given up on any notion of good acknowledgement. “But what if that debt is to the King? And what happens when you don’t even know what debt there is to pay?”

“… Explain yourself.”

Kevan was shocked. He’d have thought Tywin would order him to silence, if not banished him from his sight.

“A stunted dwarf. Maybe poison to the womb could have done it. But mismatched everything? Hair so blond it almost looks white. Mismatched eyes from birth. One blue going on green. One blue going on _purple_. What if it doesn’t turn all the way to black? What if it stays like that? Where would the purple come from? How far do we have to look for black eyes in the family even? It’d have to be the Marbrant branch because he sure as hells didn’t get it from aunt Rohanne. Cersei was torturing him in the crib the other day, did you know?”

Tywin had been glaring balefully at their youngest sibling, but that last revelation cracked his composure. “… She did what?”

Kevan almost failed to mask his shock a second time. To latch onto that obvious deflection over everything else… Was he… was he actually doubting Joanna’s fidelity? How many of Creylen’s tortured lies did Tywin believe? _Were_ they lies? If Tywin believed them…

“Genna’s the one who found her,” Gerion revealed when the silence stretched too long.

“It’s true,” their sister admitted. Her knitting needles paused. “She threatened the wetnurse into leaving. Then she undid his swaddling clothes and hurt him until I stopped her. She didn’t even notice I’d come in, that’s how lost she was in it. When I took her to task, you know what she told me? ‘The little monster killed mother, he deserves it.’”

Tywin said nothing. Kevan couldn’t meet his eyes, Or Genna’s. They were all far too near to broaching topics that were forbidden.

“Give me Tyrion,” Gerion repeated, face bereft of the usual mockery he aimed at the rest of the world, as he dared those matters that were utterly unthinkable before Creylen’s ill-fated testimony. “You’ll have your hands full with Jaime and Cersei.”

“Enough.” Tywin didn’t shout, but he didn’t need to. “Your part in this talk is over. This subject is closed.”

Gerion nodded, conveying mockery without seeming to, but did not rise to leave. In that, at least, he knew better. He’d not been dismissed.

“What else could the maesters have been up to?” Kevan desperately hoped the others would accept the blatant attempt to change the topic. ‘Confessions’ under torture about Tyrion’s parentage were one thing. Claims about _Jaime and Cersei’s_ parentage were another disaster entirely. “If there really was a conspiracy of them that tried to kill the Starks…”

“Whatever the truth is, Hightower had a grievance of his own to go so bloody,” Genna ventured. Click click click. “Somehow or other, the maesters overstepped…”

“And he put them in their place,” Tyg guesed, sounding vaguely approving.

“No,” Tywin said, shaking his head. “If that were the case, he’d have done so from the beginning. Instead, he waited and then seemingly panicked when Stark’s swift arrival blindsided him. There must have been something else going on in Oldtown, or perhaps the Citadel itself. A single house’s reputation wouldn’t have been enough for Hightower’s response on its own, even Stark’s.”

“You think the Hightowers were part of it, whatever it was,” Kevan surmised, though he’d already reached that conclusion. “That he killed the maesters for deniability, not justice.”

“You do not?” Tywin asked, sounding forbidding and diapproving.

Kevan thought seizing Creylen for torture was the same mistake, instead of trying something more subtle. Now they didn’t know any better than anyone else whether or not they were among the ‘few’ great houses undermined by their maesters. “I think we’re past the point of knowing,” he instead told his brother. “Hightower’s purge is already looking so complete that there likely isn’t any way left to get straight answers.”

“I think you’re all missing the point,” Tyg cut in. “Rickard Stark just marched his troops across all the southern kingdoms during winter, faster than a rider in summer, when nobody else could match his pace.”

“I did not, in fact, miss it,” Tywin rebuked him. “But it’s a distant concern to the real prize.”

Kevan, for a moment, couldn’t process what he’d heard. He thought Tywin was sharing in their grief and anger left without a viable target. Wasn’t he? Or had he already moved on to… what exactly?

Tywin looked down at them from where he stood near the window, then walked to sit at his desk. “The Citadel has been blooded, broken and disgraced. Ser Baelor Hightower seems to have gone on his own purge after Stark left as well. What do you think this means for the maesters and acolytes there? Many eyes are turned towards Oldtown. There will be dozens if not hundreds of maesters, or acolytes as good as maesters, doing the opposite right as we speak. Avowed or not, think you there aren’t those looking to flee into the night after what Hightower did? A lord could easily have his pick of just those poor sods. And, if what all we heard is correct, Stark already _has_. He got first pick of them _and_ their precious books. I will not have House Lannister miss the opportunity now open to us. I expect full support from all of you.”

“… You want to make our own Citadel,” Kevan couldn’t muster any emotion. He could barely muster the comprehension as to what Tywin was trying to tell them. Creating a Citadel of their own… he couldn’t imagine it.

Neither, it seemed, could the others, so deep their quiet had grown.

“No longer will House Lannister kowtow to the wisdom of self-deluded old men from across the continent. Nor will we open ourselves up to treachery from Hightower’s grey rats. This is not the first time the maesters forgot their place. Nor the first time they were killed for dubious loyalty. Yet always has House Hightower managed to retain its stranglehold on all knowledge everywhere. I doubt Stark knew what he would set in motion when he left his empty lands, but house Lannister will _not_ waste an opportunity so uniquely suited for us and only us.”

Kevan could see it. The Citadel’s history. Their great library without equal. The constant stream of gold from all lords who needed a maester in their keep. Right there, right then, it had been rendered moot, if only temporarily. If they could act within the window of opportunity…

It took many instructed scholars to start an institute of learning. The maesters had no obligation to create a competitor to the Citadel, especially since they made their vows to the lord, the realm and the citadel itself. Even if a lord forced the maester to teach others, one maester alone would never be enough to start anything. The less time consuming choice was to just send more men to the citadel. Writing books was never easy either. It took a lot of money, parchment and time. Not even House Lannister ever bothered with such a waste of time, even if they _could_ ignore the issue of expenses. Why do that when you could just buy the book? Sure, it can cost a fortune, but it would cost a fortune to have it made too. As for a treacherous maester… all you had to do is kill him and hire another. The citadel was always happy to provide more.

Of course, that was suspicious on its own too, in hindsight.

Kevan blinked. “You think Stark will fail,” he realized.

Tywin nodded. “Even if the Citadel does lose its monopoly on scribes, it won’t be enough. Hightower and the Conclave doubtlessly know this, or they wouldn’t have so easily acceded to Stark’s demands. A fistful of acolytes that have not completed their chains and some books will never be enough to start a new Citadel. Others have tried the same, many times over these thousand years of history. Even if Stark did get one or two maesters to join him, they will have to spend years just to complete the education of the acolytes and there is still the problem of the scribes and the production of books. I am certain that the triad of Oldtown has already divined the conclusion to this sordid drama.”

“They’ll renounce the effort by next winter,” Kevan supposed that was what Tywin was getting at. “The North struggles with winter and is not the most wealthy. Certainly not enough to fund anything that could compete with Oldtown.”

“Southern lords won’t risk the stewardship of their lands or their children’s education either,” Tyg agreed, much as he hated to agree with Tywin on anything. “Not on an upstart organisation from the northmost backwards reaches of the world.”

“Quite so. Kevan.”

“Yes, brother.”

“You will take the Sea Lion and attendant vessels to Oldtown. Recruit as many maesters as you can. As many learned acolytes as you can. You have my leave to tap the treasury for however much gold you need to acquire the right books as well. Perform well, brother. Our House cannot afford half measures here.”

Kevan stood and bowed. “I will do all I can, brother, but they’ll obstruct me every step of the way. If they say no, or Hightower says no, there won’t be much I can do.” Stark wasn’t the only one facing the issue of too few learned men and too few books.

“Of course. Which is why I will join you for the trip and then go on to King’s Landing. I am the Hand of the King and his Grace has summoned me back to his side to put the realm in order. Given recent developments, I’ve no doubt he will see the wisdom in signing the appropriate royal permits and decrees to solve this small matter.”

“I understand. Good luck then, brother.”

“Indeed. Take Gerion with you. Perhaps some time at sea will remind him what the proper noble airs smell like.”

Mercifully, their youngest brother didn’t make a sound. “As you say.”

“Dismissed.”

Kevan, Tygett, Genna and Gerion left the solar of Casterly Rock in silence.

By unspoken agreement, the four walked down the corridor towards their family’s private living room. They didn’t all keep their peace for so long though. That it was Gerion who broke it wasn’t a surprise. What he said, however, was.

“The King won’t agree.” None of his typical smirk showed on his face. “Lannisport could easily become another Oldtown. His Grace currently believes the order of maesters murdered all his children. And his father. Who knows what else he’ll believe next. Gods save us if he decides they were behind Summerhall. The Dance. The death of the dragons even. He won’t admit it, but he’ll know he’s at the lowest House Targaryen has ever been since Maegor’s rule.”

“You think he’ll deny his own Hand?” Tyg asked.

“I think he’ll want to do everything _but_ empower a second such threat if he’s in such a weak position.”

Or maybe he’ll order the Citadel dismantled. Maybe he’ll fund a rival institution himself. Maybe he’ll try to have the Hightowers attained, which means Tywin will have all his time taken by trying to stop a war. “There’s no point in speculating,” Kevan told him.

“Yes,” Gerion said with a derisive sneer. “After all, what better way for a new, loyal order of knights of the mind than Lannisport? A harbor, protection from a powerful house, and if Tywin proposes building it somewhere in King’s Landing, Aerys would refuse just to spite him. After all, was his Hand suggesting he bring _more_ of those treacherous rats within reaching distance of House Targaryen? He’d _have_ to build it in Lannisport at that point. After all, what other place was there? Gulltown? Starfall? White Harbor? Maybe Tywin should suggest Dragonstone, just to see what happens.”

Kevan bleakly wondered if there was anyone else in the world with the same skill in providing perfectly persuasive arguments in such a way that you doubted every single one of them.

“You don’t think our brother will succeed?” Genna asked when they all stopped at the last fork in the corridors.

“Town charter,” was all Gerion said as goodbye.

They watched their youngest brother leave, feeling discomfited.

Kevan hesitated before leaving for his own preparations, but… he was never as confident as Tywin. He could never be so sure of his course of action as to bet all on his chosen path. “Keep a close eye on the children.”

“Not just Tyrion?” Tyg asked, surprised.

Kevan looked at Genna.

“Best to be thorough,” their sister agreed, offering their bemused brother knight her arm to be led onwards. “Wouldn’t want to miss any notable _leanings,_ you understand. ‘We’re halves of the same soul’ indeed. That girl will be the death of us, I swear.”

It was two weeks later while still in Oldtown that the next royal decree reached them. It sent Kevan reeling, left all their plans upended, and sent Gerion Lannister into the most uproarious, breath-stealing laughing fit of his entire life to date.

“Hahahahahah! I told you! I told you! Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah!”

Kevan heard his brother’s words and read the king’s words feeling the same dismay.

Tywin, what did you _do?_


	24. Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (Baelor)

## BAELOR

“-. 274 AC .-“

Climbing to the summit of the Hightower on foot instead of taking the lift wasn’t his favorite pastime, but he chose it nevertheless. Gave him time to think. About little sisters feeling caged, a young brother that understood too much, and the simmering rage at his increasing failure to dig up the holes of _child-buggering shitstains_. He stewed in it, that anger. Stewed more and more with every murdered scribe and dead acolyte and maester’s carcass that showed up in a ditch. What had started out as an investigation against old men too big for their britches had turned into a bloodbath, then into a frayed web of thinly veiled grudge killings that even the full mobilization of House Hightower’s garrison hadn’t managed to suppress.

Ser Baelor Brightsmile they called him. Baelor Breakwind too, by the Dornish. He’d have a different name entirely soon enough, he was sure of it.

Baelor had started out helping oversee the investigation, outright refused to play a part in the travesty his father unleashed when Stark showed up out of nowhere, then nearly refused the peace offering to be spokesman for their house, after his Lord Father’s first and only face-to-face meeting with the Lord Warden. Baelor never imagined he’d turn around and outright demand to be brought back into things when Stark left. But he did. And his father, to more surprise than he should have had cause to feel, agreed. Gave him full command of the guard when Stark’s private tip-off about _child-buggering shitstains_ began turning up its own trails of skittish scribes, catamites and corpses.

That had to be why he was being summoned to his father’s high seat that morning. He’d been called back from the guard barracks he’d been switching between for sleep, down in the city. Just a day after he’d begun tracing certain skeletons to the closets of certain _worthies_ not associated with the Citadel or its books and maesters. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

 _How swiftly times change_ , Baelor Hightower thought bitterly. Just a moonturn ago he’d not have thought twice about his father’s respect for the rule of law. Now he was assuming the worst of the one who’d raised him on the values of justice and chivalry. Oh, how the Seven Hells liked to mock the righteous!

The last stretch of stairs to the Summit lacked railings. His father had once told him that it was meant to remind them of the dangers of looking too far down upon others. Baelor wondered when Lord Leyton Hightower had stopped taking his own advice.

The Summit of the Hightower was not so much a Solar as it was a great hall unto itself. It was wide, tall and supported by many load-bearing columns done in Ghozaian style. They tapered up into strong archways from whose vaults hung great chandeliers. Most of them were just for show though. During the day, the Summit was lit by the myriad of arched windows lining the single, circular wall. And at night, light cascaded from the great Beacon above them through the many panels of stained glass incrusted into the ceiling.

There were no walls inside the Summit, but there were plenty of spaces and daises set apart. Some high, some low, some large, some small, many even afforded a certain measure of privacy by YiTish dividers. Dining tables, game tables, playpens, reading areas, living rooms and more. Highest of all, though, was the Lord’s Office. The largest and highest platform, from where the Lord of the Tower could rule all he surveyed. It was accessible by four staircases and sat in the very center, atop the summit’s private amenities – privy, bathhouse and kitchen. There were four bridges too, aligned with the cardinal points. They connected to the mezzanine running along the walls, from which one could exit into the open-air terraces beyond.

In older days, House Hightower was of such numbers that the Summit fully deserved its role as private common room just for their family. Leyton Hightower’s admittedly prolific seed seemed to be making a good bid of restoring that state of affairs. Or, at least, setting down the foundation for it. Baelor wondered how many women he’d be calling ‘step mother’ by the time his father was finished. He was at three at the moment. Probably going on four, seeing as it had been almost two years since the passing of Lady Druella. Alerie had once joked that Lynesse had to have sucked her mother dry before she even burst out of her belly. How else would such a lively, plump, big-boned Manderly not live past her birthing bed? Which wasn’t _entirely_ unfair, seeing how high-maintenance Lynesse was turning out to be. Not that it stopped any of them from spoiling her rotten.

Baelor had, briefly, wondered if maybe something more sinister had been at work. If maybe their House had been undermined by their maesters like who knew how many others. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. Archmaester Ebrose was an old friend of the family, a genuinely kind old man, and the sole reason Baelor had a full five siblings instead of half. The Healer had been horrified by the purge, but that only made him seem less suspicious in Baelor’s eyes. More tellingly, Ebrose had strongly advised their father to lock down the Citadel and kick over the whole hornet’s nest the moment Stark’s raven arrived. Use a stick and carrot approach to encourage internal dissent instead of attempting any sort of secrecy. Compel someone to come forward. If it truly existed, no conspiracy so large could be entirely free of dissent or detractors, and trying to out-subtle the maesters was a fool’s errand. So Ebrose had argued.

Rightly, as it turned out. Baelor didn’t even know _who_ was killing who at this point. It wasn’t because people didn’t come forward – they came in great number just on the worth of his chivalrous reputation. It wasn’t because they didn’t have evidence either, there was too _much_ evidence for everyone and everything. There was seldom a way to know if it was true or planted too. It was galling. Hundreds of guards deployed through the whole Citadel, hundreds more all over Oldtown, yet _still_ no rhyme, reason or end to the murders happening right under their noses. The initial purge had been entirely on his father’s orders and at the hands of Hightower soldiery, but it wasn’t long before that stopped being the case. Over two thirds of the maesters and archmaesters whose heads were now on spikes had already been dead when the guards went to seize them, conveniently surrounded with confessions or proof of their wrongdoings. And Stranger take whoever expected him to buy into the various ‘suicides’ that beset the Citadel the day after Stark left. There had been one fool who tried to blame it on the Lord of the North. He turned out to be one of the handful of people in the know about certain _child-buggering shitstains._

Baelor had never dreamed Citadel politics could be so bloody. Hells, he’d not heard of there even being dissent in the Citadel before. The Conclave was supposed to run things with a very firm hand. Then again, that assumed it really was all maesters killing maesters, instead of certain _worthies_ having a hand in it.

The number of bodies in drains and ditches seemed to have tapered off the past few days at least, but Baelor wasn’t ready to feel optimistic just yet.

He was glad Ebrose hadn’t complained when father ordered him to remain under the protection of their house until further notice. Losing him to the madness would have been a tragedy. At least the Holy Mother still had some mercy to dole out, even if that wasn’t what Baelor really needed.

 _Father grant me justice and Chrone your insight in the coming days_ , Baelor prayed as he approached the High Office. _I am preciously starved for both_.

The Lord’s Office was a perfect circle with four fannable dividers made of alternating oak and weirwood, framed in brass enamelled in Hightower smoke grey. The panels were each as wide as a man’s arm was long, and the hinge rods were fitted with wheels on the top and bottom, enabling them to slide and roll on the rails built into the ceiling and floor. Usually they were folded away behind the lord’s chair, both for practicality and protection. Today, though, they enclosed the high rise completely.

Baelor climbed the stairs with a feeling of trepidation but didn’t hesitate to push open the way.

Ebrose was seated on a couch to the right, anxiously wringing his hands. Leyton Hightower was at his desk, writing a scroll. And to the left, sitting at the small carrel where usually worked one of his father’s many scribes, was Malora. Baelor’s elder sister. She sat still in her seat, her long white hair hanging limply over her back and shoulders as she kept intent, blood-red eyes on the only object in that place that Baelor had never seen before.

A glass candle. Tall, twisting, sharp at the edges and colored gleaming jade, all except for the flame. It was an unpleasant brightness that gave off no color of its own. Instead, it seemed to be a patchwork of all the colors around and behind it, only stranger. The yellow of the desk’s wood shone like gold, shadows looked like holes in the world, Malora’s white hair looked like fresh snow, and her red eyes looked less like blood and more like glowing embers.

“Did you know the only difference between black and green glass candles is that black ones are broken?” his father asked idly. “I didn’t, until a no-name scribe delivered that one today. Along with an unsigned letter telling us that the Citadel has finished settling its internal matters.”

Baelor blinked and mentally readjusted himself.

“It was unsigned but written in fifteen different hands, four of which Ebrose recognised. I’m still not sure if it was a misstep or peace offering.”

Baelor stood half-way to the candle.

“They included a warning that other people and _things_ may be watching through the flames when used, also as peace offering.”

Baelor stood half-way to the candle he didn’t remember approaching.

“Please don’t interrupt your sister though, as I’ve also been told that the flame will not last overlong.”

The knight shook his head and took a wary step back. There was a long list of something next to the candle, he now saw. Malora briefly looked away from the flame to underline something on it. _Names_ , Baelor though through wooly thoughts.

“Take a seat, son.”

Disturbed, he did as told and quietly took the chair opposite the desk from his father.

The other man didn’t look up but slid a thick scroll in his direction, already open. It looked to be no more than one generation old, if that. “Read that aloud to me. Just the first paragraph for now.”

Baelor suppressed the impulse to shake himself out of whatever that had been. He took up the scroll and did as bid. _Boons of the Andals_ , the title said, _by Septon Cozbi_. “When the Andals came, the Hightowers were amongst the first lords of Westeros to welcome them. ‘Wars are bad for trade,’ said Lord Dorian Hightower, when he set aside his wife of twenty years, the mother of his children, to take an Andal princess as his bride. His grandson Lord Damon (the Devout) was the first to accept the Faith. To honor the new gods, he built the first sept in Oldtown and six more elsewhere in his realm. When he died prematurely of a bad belly, Septon Robeson became regent for his newborn son, ruling Oldtown in all but name for the next twenty years and ultimately becoming the first High Septon. The boy he raised and trained, Lord Triston Hightower, raised the Starry Sept in his honor after his passing.”

His father hummed, but still didn’t look up from the scroll he was writing. Whatever it was, it had to be important. It was the best quality parchment they had, framed in gold ink. “Does any of it strike you as strange?”

Baelor thought over the words a few times before it came to him. “His wife of twenty years,” The knight frowned. “The mother of his _children_. As in more than one.”

“Go on.”

“What in the hells? Were did they go? Where did all the other grandchildren go for that matter? All our other relatives?”

“Where do you think?” Layton Hightower still wouldn’t look up from the increasingly wordy document he was writing.

“…. Father,” Baelor said slowly, his mind going over and over the same three words. Raised and trained. Raised and trained. Raised and trained. “Why the hells did we let some Septon take up regency of our lands and our family?”

“I don’t really need to answer that, do I?”

 _There were none of us left to gainsay them_ , Baelor thought. A great maw opened up in his belly, black and simmering.

“Read the next section,” Leyton said.

Baelor did, not trusting his own thoughts at the moment. “In the centuries that followed, Oldtown became the unquestioned center of the Faith for all of Westeros. From the dark marble halls of the Starry Sept, a succession of High Septons donned the crystal crown (the first of which was given to the Faith by the Lord Triston’s son Lord Barris) to become the voice of the Seven on earth, commanding the swords of the Faith Militant and the hearts of all the faithful from Dorne to the Neck. Oldtown became their holy city, and many devout men and women traveled there to pray at its septs and shrines and other holy places. Doubtless it was in part due to these ties to the Seven that the Hightowers were so often able to keep themselves separate from House Gardener’s countless wars.”

“Skip the next one. Read me the other two.”

“By the time of Aegon’s Conquest, Oldtown was beyond question the greatest city in all of Westeros—the largest, richest, and most populous, and a center of both learning and faith. Even so, it might well have suffered the same fate as Harrenhal if not for the close ties between the Hightower and the Starry Sept, for it was the High Septon who persuaded Lord Manfred Hightower to offer no resistance to Aegon Targaryen and his dragons but instead to open his gates at the conqueror’s approach and do him homage.

“The conflict thus averted flared up again a generation later, however, during the bloody struggle between the Faith and the Conqueror’s second son, the aptly named King Maegor the Cruel. The High Septon during the first years of Maegor’s reign was kin by marriage to the Hightowers. His sudden death in 44 AC—shortly after King Maegor had threatened to incinerate the Starry Sept with dragonfire in his fury over His High Holiness’s condemnation of his later marriages—is considered quite fortuitous, as it allowed Lord Martyn Hightower to open his gates before Balerion and Vhagar unleashed their flames.”

“Did you know there were six high septons during the Conqueror’s reign?” Leyton Hightower asked blandly. The man then slid forth an open tome. “Read me the addendum at the bottom.”

The black pit broiled. “The unexpected nature of the High Septon’s death in 44 AC aroused much suspicion, and whispers of murder persist to this day. Some believe His High Holiness was removed by his own brother, Ser Morgan Hightower, commander of the Warrior’s Sons in Oldtown (and it is undeniably true that Ser Morgan was the sole Warrior’s Son pardoned by King Maegor). Others suspect Lord Martyn’s maiden aunt, the Lady Patrice Hightower, though their argument seems to rest upon the belief that poison is a woman’s weapon. It has even been suggested that the Citadel might have played a role in the removal of the High Septon, though this seems far-fetched at best.”

“I don’t need to spell it out for you, do I son?”

Baelor stared down at the words, speechless. Times before he’d read the same histories, but after the past week they seemed to have a completely different meaning.

“Now read this,” his father pushed forth a raven message. “Quietly if you please.”

Baelor took the small scroll, read the tiny script of the royal proclamation and blanched.

Lord Leyton Hightower put down his quill, sealed the gold-framed scroll in wax with his signet ring, pushed it across the desk and rose to start packing various effects from the rear counters and bookshelves.

Ser Baelor Hightower took it with a deep feeling of dread. He read it. Then he read it again, desperately wishing the words said something other than what he’d craved for since New Year. The words stuck out to him. Some stabbed at him outright. I hereby do declare. Witnessed and signed by. In full possession of my faculties.

A House Head’s _High Warrant_.

The closest thing to abdication you could get.

Baelor looked up at his father, horrified. “Father, what…”

“I am summoned to account to the King,” the older man said as he loaded a satchel with records, writs and confessions. “I need also ascertain the fate of my uncle. You have full authority to do whatever you please with me gone. Depending on who gets to whisper in our good King’s ear before I get there, it may be some time before I return. If I return.”

“Father!” Baelor shot out of his seat. It nearly toppled, and in the aftermath the knight found himself not knowing what else to say.

“I’ve no time to discuss or argue with you if I’m to catch the high tide.” Leyton donned his satchel and walked around the desk to lay his hands on his son’s shoulders “But I don’t need to. Do I?”

“Father…” Baelor’s heart seemed to be bursting at the seams and salt stung at the edges of his eyes suddenly. “You can’t be serious. One would have to be mad to think…”

Leyton smiled grimly at the way he trailed off. “Yes. One would have to be mad, wouldn’t he?” The man embraced his son then. Briefly but tightly for all that.

Baelor returned it fiercely. This was _nothing_ like what he expected this meeting to be. How he wished it was.

“Sharks are attracted to blood, my son.” Lord Hightower pulled away, cupping his son’s face what might well be the last time. “Remind them of our house words.”

“We Light the Way,” Baelor said bleakly.

“Yes,” Layton said darkly, pushing a small coin into his hand. “ _We_ Light the Way. The reach of the Faith is wide, but their foresight is poor. It took us generations to avenge ourselves on the fanatics that took us, but we had our victory in the end. We changed the faith itself to suit our purpose. Eventually, ever so naturally, it was once again the name Hightower that went to light the way. You understand, now, why I did upon the Citadel what I did. Don’t you, son? You, who now want to do the same unto others.”

Baelor didn’t agree. Didn’t approve either. But his father was right on one thing. He did understand him now, if just a little.

The other man nodded, not needing or expecting more than that. “Strike hard, son. Strike fast. Strike _first_.”

Lord Leyton of House Hightower ordered Archmaester Ebrose to sign as witness to the High Warrant and then left.

Baelor watched him until he disappeared down the lift, then looked around at the vast and opulent emptiness he was now Lord of in all but name.

He left. He couldn’t stand to be there right then. He strode away, across the southern gangway towards the mezzanine and then beyond even that. The doors creaked as they gave way to the howling winds of winter. The cold bit at him despite the waves of heat that came down from the great beacon above and behind him. He ignored it. Went and leaned over the railing to watch the city. The roads. The bridges. The harbour beyond. He waited there for his father to emerge from the grand entrance below. Watched his procession all the way to the docks. Watched him get on the ship. Watched the ship pull away. Followed it until it disappeared beyond the horizon.

His father didn’t look behind even once.

Baelor stood there for hours, thinking of trade, war, murder and the small coin that kept turning between his fingers, cast in the shape of a green hand. A thought came to him then, of what he’d thought was an unrelated piece of history. Of an ancient House that shared their features and interests. A house that used to be sworn to the same line of kings before being cast out. For growing too powerful, the histories taught. Their exile from the Reach had been around the same time that bad bellies started to determine succession, wasn’t it?

What a coincidence.

When he went back inside, Ebrose was fussing over Malora while said sister was ignoring him in favour of reading the list of names. The glass candle was no longer lit.

Baelor hesitated, then sat down at his father’s desk. It didn’t feel like anything.

Malora quietly gave him the scroll. That list of names. It was written in fifteen different hands and detailed the helpers, abetters, identities, occupations and addresses of the _child-buggering shitstains_. All but two of the _worthies_ he’d been suspecting were on it.

“Archmaester,” Baelor asked, not looking up. “How much should we trust this?”

“I will never presume to make such decisions for you, My Lord.”

Such decisions. Not ‘any’ or ‘all’ decisions. “How much do _you_ trust this then?”

“More than I trusted the prior Conclave, that’s for certain.”

He looked up in surprise. “That was beyond blunt.”

The Healer wrung his hands somberly. “Do you know how I was able to rise to my rank?”

“By being the best?” But he already knew it wouldn’t be so simple.

“I told the archmaesters how wise and good they are. I told them that my liege and my parents commanded me to put myself into their hands. I told them that I had always dreamed that one day I might be allowed to wear the chain and serve the greater good, that service is the highest honor, and obedience the highest virtue. And when one of my fellow scribes died of a bad belly a day after he openly vowed to crack the higher mysteries, I made sure to say nothing of magic or prophecies or dragons. I never planned to delve such matters regardless, but I made doubly sure not to say anything indiscreet.”

Baelor felt the broiling chasm in his belly burn with a poison flame. “That sounds like slavery.”

“It does.”

Baelor decided not to ask how much of that his father had been aware of. “How much should I trust this ‘peace offering’?”

“That only you can decide,” Ebrose told him. “I am not thinking clearly. I am still processing the possibility that I might be able to teach my students to speak freely without expecting poison in their porridge.”

Baelor clenched his fist. “They call themselves the ‘Twisted.’”

“Yes,” Ebrose smiled. “A fine homage, don’t you think? The origins of the Citadel are almost as mysterious as those of the Hightower itself, but most credit its founding to the same person: the second son of Uthor of the High Tower, Prince Peremore the Twisted. A sickly boy, born with a withered arm and twisted back, Peremore was bedridden for much of his short life but had an insatiable curiosity about the world beyond his window. So he turned to wise men, teachers, priests, healers, and singers, along with a certain number of wizards, alchemists, and sorcerers. It is said the prince had no greater pleasure in life than listening to these scholars argue with one another. When Peremore died, his brother King Urrigon bequeathed a large tract of land beside the Honeywine to ‘Peremore’s pets,’ that they might establish themselves and continue teaching, learning, and questing after truth. And so they did.”

Wise men. Priests. Teachers. Maegi. Argument and debate. It sounded so different from what the Citadel was like today. Or maybe had been. “Leave me.”

Ebrose bowed and took the lift down to his chambers, though not before seeing Malora to the sleeping area she’d set aside for herself. It had been years since the Mad Maid had descended from the Summit. She wasn’t changing her routine today, it seemed. 

Baelor spent the day thinking. Of conspiracies, mysteries, crimes and options. He thought about the people of Oldtown who were living in fear. He thought about his reputation as a chivalrous knight and the damage it had been taking. Damage he could _not_ suffer now that he couldn’t just spend it like coin to get his way. Like he’d been planning, even if it got him banished or exiled to soothe fears and tempers. He thought of his father, who surely must hate to be indebted to the Citadel, especially after he’d tried to clamp down on it only to weaken his hold even further. And he thought that his father probably still preferred it over being indebted to Rickard Stark.

He had a plan by noon, sent a runner out before supper, and town criers were spreading word by mid-afternoon, of his plan to hold a great speech in front of the Citadel. He spent the rest of his day with his brother and sisters.

And the next morning, upon confirmation that the guards had followed his orders to concentrate around the Mansions of the Pious instead of the Citadel, Baelor Hightower climbed the pulpit and gave a speech. A brief apology, a read of the King’s royal decree, full disclosure about the events at the Citadel, and his personal reassurance that things will go back to normal. As soon as he’s finished excising the canker represented by _child-buggering shitstains_ like Septon Utt, matron Cozbi, Septon Dolion, Septon Donahue, merchant Enyo, Septa Deianira, Septon Aridam, Septon Bronach, Septon Ubel, and every other _worthy_ on the far too long list he had with him.

The thing about purges was that they scared the mob. The thing about mobs was that they were led easily by the right people. And the thing about people was that there was always someone smart enough to notice when a group outnumbered all others combined thrice over.

He was not discreet. He didn’t need to feign his outrage at their supposed spiritual leaders. He didn’t need to mix rabble-rousers in the crowd. He didn’t even need to bring forth any witnesses. So many days of people living in fear combined with his impeccable reputation did all the work by themselves.

When the Sea Lion docked at Oldtown, he only spared whatever time was needed on the basic courtesies. When people told him the Lannisters were poaching their learned men, he told them the Citadel could mind its own business. And when the second decree came to Oldtown and unceremoniously requisitioned all the present Lannisters and their resources for the establishment of a new Citadel on the opposite coast of Westeros, Baelor Hightower only scanned it to make sure there wasn’t a mention of his father getting burned at the stake. Then he went back to his own business.

Keeping up with all the lynching going on was hard work.

It turned out that people could feel rather betrayed and angry on learning the _things_ their spiritual guides got up to with their young. More than even public executions could appease. Those all too few he had proof enough to justify.

He could almost see the ripples as they burst from Oldtown and stretched to the very ends of the lands where the Faith held sway. The end wouldn’t be cut and dry, he knew. No matter. Whatever happened next, he and his would be right there to light the way.

Strike hard. Strike fast. Strike first.

Ser Baelor the Bloody smiled grimly as the streets ran red with the blood of priests.


	25. Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (Denys)

## DENYS

“-. 274 AC .-“

“All hear!” thundered the voice of Harlan Grandison, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. “All hear Aerys Targaryen, the Second of His Name, by the grace of the Old Gods and New Gods, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.”

All eyes were on the king as he rose from his seat of fanged steel. The red and black royal robes caught and tore in three different places as he descended from the top of the asymmetric monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges that was the Iron Throne. It was quite the feat for Denys to not let his face betray what he thought of it, let alone the king’s bedraggled appearance. The man had already looked a sight on his arrival to the City of Shit, but now he looked even worse. One wondered when the man had last combed his hair. Or trimmed his beard. Cut his fingernails even. Weeks, at least. They were looking rather long and uneven even from a distance. Made it easy to believe all the gossip, about how Aerys had never been particularly adept at outshining his own Hand. Maybe that was why he’d started to publically undermine, mock and humiliate the High Butcher. And the less said about how the king compared to his pale shadows, the better.

_The grace of the gods is looking mighty unkempt_ , he thought with disdain. _Stinks like a putrid cunt too, now that the late Grand Maester’s smell of pork has properly mixed with the capital’s native ‘fragrances.’_

Still, he withheld his sneer. He’d stay in step with the pageantry. Pretend the truest loyalty, convey all the right affectations and don every false smile. The suspicion, the contempt, the moodswings that almost saw him arrested, the condescension of this failed son of an upstart dynasty of sister-fucking abominations, soon he could put them all behind him along with the rest of the filth.

“The King’s Justice has been dispensed, with Fire and Blood!” said Aerys Targaryen over the awkward silence of the court. “But that was merely the first step in redressing the wrongs inflicted upon the Realm by the order of traitors. Lord Darklyn! Step forward.”

Lord Denys of the House Darklyn emerged from amidst the other courtiers, strode upon the smooth marble of the great hall and bent the knee at the foot of the Iron Throne.

“Having verified the veracity of the ghastly assassination, subornation, line theft, and line extinction conspiracies perpetrated by the Order of Maesters, as confirmed beyond doubt by two Wardens of the Realm, the Iron Throne hereby issues the following proclamation.” Which Aerys should have done before calling Denys forward, but an upstart wouldn’t be an upstart if he didn’t like to see you kneel. “From this moment forth, allowing any one institution to control all knowledge and communication in the Seven Kingdoms will no more be borne!”

A stir went through the court.

“The matter of House Hightower’s potential sedition remains to be settled.” Denys couldn’t find anything ‘potential’ about his tone, nor about the conspicuous absence of Ser Gerold Hightower who used to lead the Whitecloaks until a moon ago. “But the Iron Throne is of firm and immutable view on this point. Therefore, the Crown hereby calls for the establishment of a new order of learned men, one removed from the reach and influence of whichsoever forces may or may not still be entrenched in House Hightower’s pets.”

It spoke to how deeply entrenched the _Citadel_ was in the day to day reality of Westeros that over half the court was still surprised at the decree.

“Nevertheless, the Crown is neither blind nor lacking informed counsel with regards to the enormous endeavour that is establishing a new order of learned men.” Counsel which Denys had been prompt to sail down from Duskendale to volunteer. Immediately. The same day the first proclamation reached him. “Backing. Coin. The traffic of men and goods that only a harbour can supply. The patronage of a prestigious House. Closeness to the Crown, yet not so much that a similar conspiracy would be even better positioned to strike against the Realm, should this folly prove intrinsic to those who fancy themselves wise. Lord Darklyn. Please rise.”

_It took you bloody long enough_. He stood and faced the king, making sure not to look at the fake lion lest he truly go blind from vainglory. Denys had never shied from drinking full from the cup of envy. After all, the envy of your enemies always tasted so very sweet. This was neither the time nor place to revel in it though.

“Lord Darklyn. The Crown is of the mind that your House Seat more than fulfils all the conditions for establishing a new Citadel. Do you accept this honor?”

“If that is the will of Your Grace, I will humbly accept.”

“Receive, then, the Crown’s decree.” Aerys Targaryen motioned to his Hand, who handed a gilded scroll over to Ser Jonnothor Darry to deliver. “A new title, Keeper of the Wise, to be held by you and your heirs after you. A new Royal Charter for the City of Duskendale, lifting all boundaries of expansion and affirming the right to set and change all aspects of governance as House Darklyn sees fit. Furthermore, the burden of taxation is hereby lifted from the city and its dependencies. These boons shall last until such a time as the new Citadel, in whatever name is decided on by its founders, has achieved parity with the Citadel of Oldtown in representation among the landed nobility of the realm.”

Still amazed he’d managed to cajole such open-ended terms from himself, Denys took the scroll from Darry and opened it for a quick perusal. This, too, was part of the pageantry, as no one could be expected to read this grand a document for the first time in such a setting. Denys gave it a quick skim anyway. Speed-reading was among his more useful skills, and reading a given contract was just good sense, even if terms had been agreed beforehand down... to the… wording…

His eyes flew over the writing and abruptly stopped at the terms of taxation.

“Ahem.”

Denys slowly lifted his eyes to meet those of Tywin ‘Lannister,’ in whose stone-cold mien he could nonetheless see the spark of petty vindication as clearly as he’d come to recognise the spark of madness in the king.

“Lord Darklyn,” Aerys impatiently called. “Do you or do you not accept this honor?”

“… I accept with my most humble thanks, Your Grace,” Denys replied, acutely aware of the time, the place, the wholly red and gold livery of the troops ensuring his ‘safety’ since the Hand’s return to King’s Landing, and the vivid memory of the king’s _reaction_ to Pycelle’s tortured screams. “Though I would like to extend my appreciation to the Lord Hand as well.”

Aerys seemed to be taken by a sudden fury, but Denys couldn’t help but appreciate even more the way Tywin ‘Lannister’s’ well hidden satisfaction faltered.

“Is that so?” Aerys Targaryen mused with thinly veiled outrage. “Do go on, then. Express your _appreciation_ for my _dear_ and _old_ friend.”

“Indeed, Your Grace.” He was more determined than ever to not associate the word ‘Targaryen’ with ‘my’ and ‘king’ even in his head. “I am confident that all rumors and gossip about a rift between you and your Hand will die a final death within the week. Why, the moment I learned of Lord Tywin’s delegation in Oldtown, I was convinced that they are, and always have been, but empty words spread by despicable malcontents.”

Utter silence filled the Great Hall.

“I confess to once having some small measure of pride in my quickness of action and forthrightness,” Denys added humbly. “But now I see how paltry such feelings were. I admit I wanted to disbelieve when I first heard it, this morning while checking on my ship down in the harbour. But now I see truly that even my most well informed counsel is nothing next to Your Grace’s foresight. Truly, Your Grace is blessed to have found a Hand capable of so thoroughly predicting and acting out your will. If not by your command, why else would your Hand’s own brothers have been collecting Maesters and books in Oldtown all this time?”

Lord Tywin’s face turned so dark that for half a heartbeat Denys wondered if someone had beaten him to poisoning his wine.

“Why else indeed,” murmured Aerys Targaryen, the spark of madness now turned towards away from Denys entirely.

_Does your envy taste sweet now, Lydden?_ _This is why you’re not supposed to drink from your own cup_. “By your leave, your Grace, I will set out to do your will.”

“… Granted.” The King allowed at length, still staring at his Hand. “Fair winds, Lord Keeper.”

Denys bowed low one last time, but his last glance as he turned away was for Tywin alone.

_It must kill you that I got here first._

He made it to the docks without getting attacked, assassinated or mobbed. Only the last wasn’t surprising after the ‘show’ of the day. How many other people wondered about the way the King had looked and breathed by the time the late Grand Maester’s screams finally ended? Because if he didn’t know better, Denys could swear Aerys Targaryen had almost looked aroused.

He missed the tide, but he’d expected it. It was why he’d come in the morning, before the burning, to order the captain to lift anchor if he should be delayed. He requisitioned a boat, making sure to pick an oarsman he remembered working the docks since before Tywin’s return from the Westerlands. He made it to his ship without issue and sent the man back with a silver moon for his troubles.

Once aboard, they cast off immediately, just as a small flotilla arrived from the south led by a galley larger than anything Denys had ever been on, bearing the Hightower beacon on its sails. For a moment, he regretted missing whatever drama would ensue next, but ultimately decided leaving was best. He was already losing his grip on the _real_ emotions he was feeling.

Absolutely murderous.

He spent some time on the top deck. Watched his captain and the crew as they moved around him. Listened to their voices. Traced the banners on the sails of the ships coming and going. Waved back at the large, jolly man that hollered greetings at them from the top mast of the Baratheon flagship as it went the opposite way. He stared after it for a time, watching the ship and the steadily shrinking image of King’s Landing in the distance. Tried to imagine that the fading smell of shit took his murderous rage down with it.

It didn’t work.

He turned away from the aft, went to exchange some quick words with the captain, then headed for the sailor tying rigging near the front on the starboard side and stabbed him through the kidney.

“URGK!”

His sword wrenched through flesh, came out the other side with a wet squelch and sunk dully into the taffrail.

“Do you know what else I remember besides faces?” Denys asked idly, pulling the gurgling man by the hair. “Voices. And your Westerlander accent is not as buried in trade tongue as you think, my friend.” He viciously twisted his sword.

The man screamed in agony.

“I also tend to mind _timing._ ” Denys pulled his sword out and stabbed the man through the arse, cutting his cock in half on the way out.

The shriek this time was of considerably higher pitch.

“Truly, Lydden is a fool if he thinks I’d not wonder at my man’s death to ‘mugging’ just days after his arrival to the city, leaving a spot conveniently free for an interloper to insinuate himself into my crew.”

Denys yanked his sword out, pushed the screaming man overboard, reassured his crew that he didn’t hold this one slip against them, and spent the next hour cleaning, sharpening and oiling his sword. Then he took over the would be spy’s job.

His captain wouldn’t have hired someone unless it was strictly necessary and the ship wasn’t going to man itself.

They didn’t find anything blatantly incriminating among the new hire’s things, save for a tad too many silvers. Not that he expected anything else. He didn’t actually think Tywin expected such a transparent ploy to work, because it didn’t need to work if all you wanted to send was a warning. Such a shame he played that piece so early.

Denys Darklyn spent the trip home plying his well-honed mariner skills by day, and too often failing to rest at night. He was too angry. And too angry to _stop_ being angry, lest the rage give way to something else.

He didn’t take his time appreciating the view of his home the evening when it finally came into view. Didn’t emerge from his cabin until they were docked. Didn’t linger to smile, wave and talk to his people, who always appreciated their lord remembering their names and faces and asking after their families, and treated him like a thoughtful patriarch in return.

Instead, he secured a horse, rode swiftly out of the harbour and up the cobbled streets, sped through and past the market, and did the same for the rest of the way to the Dun Fort, the squat, square stone castle with round drum towers where his line had lived since time immemorial, unbroken and never usurped.

Unlike some _other_ lines he could name.

It was in the privacy of the quarters he shared with his lovely wife that Denys, Lord of the House Darklyn of Duskendale, finally loosed the grip on his emotions.

“The Seven Hells take every man, woman and child spawned by the name Lydden!” He roared, throwing the charter scroll onto the bed in disgust. “And may the Stranger devour the fake lion alive for a thousand years!”

“Well now!” Serala exclaimed in surprise. “You’re mighty angry for someone whose last raven said everything went as well as we’d hoped. Better even. Care to share what ails you, husband?”

“The mad lion that calls himself Lannister is no better than a child throwing a tantrum over losing his toy! He took Aerys’ decree and changed the wording. Instead of sparing House Darklyn from paying taxes, it also spares the city and everyone in it form paying taxes to _us!_ ”

“He did what?”

“He’s _beggared_ us!”

The last rays of daylight passed in a whirlwind of curses, rage and recriminations hurled against the walls along with papers, tables and bottles of firewine. The night passed too, in a fervor of lowly voiced rage, talks and planning. Serala tried no end of ways to calm and soothe him, and incite him to passionate hatemaking when that didn’t work. He rebuffed her. He couldn’t stomach the thought of thinking of that man while bedding his own wife. Not any man and especially not _that_ usurper bastard.

He’d always known that line theft never led to anything but miscreants that never knew their place, but that bastard line… it truly was the worst. May the gods curse the soul of Joffrey Lydden, no matter how much poetic justice there was in the line of Lann the Usurper being in turn usurped by lesser blood.

It was well past the Hour of the Wolf when his rage finally began to exhaust itself. His thoughts were starting to clear again, though their paths were no less dark than they’d been since the throne room. He found that he didn’t regret playing his own piece when he did.

_You should have used some of those guards to kill rumors coming from the docks instead of minding me, usurper dog._

Not that it would have worked. The report about Tywin’s little poaching operation had actually come via a Merchant’s Guild raven, conveyed to him by a man from a business he had stake in. _Actual_ rumors wouldn’t make it for another week most likely, if not longer. Especially if the Hightower ship had left before Lannister’s brothers arrived at Oldtown, which it must have, to reach King’s Landing when it did. Notwithstanding all the ravens and their maesters that every Guild employed.

The Faith too. Denys wondered what chaos would occur back in the capital when the High Septon inevitably came in screaming about that _other_ nasty business that seemed to have taken place back west. Assuming it wasn’t just a poor jape, or the ramblings of a man too far into his cups.

“What are you thinking, husband?”

“Stupidity.” The Citadel’s. The king’s. Tywin Lydden’s. His own. “And the chaos it brings.”

“My family back in Myr would tell you that chaos is a ladder.”

“Aye, a mighty fine ladder it is when the chaos strikes at its own foundation and your ladder falls down faster than you can climb it.” Denys scoffed. “When a ship springs a leak, the lions roar. If no-one heeds them, they jump to swim ashore with powerful strokes of big paws. When the holds fill with water, the rats that have been squeaking silently about it abandon ship in droves to seek the closest tower to gnaw at its foundation until it topples. Only the monkey continues to climb the mast of the sinking ship, proclaiming to be the highest of all."

His words settled eerily in the near total darkness of the winter night.

The quiet sat poorly on his mind. “What do _you_ think, dear wife?”

“I think, dear husband…” Serala said from where she sat on the bed, thoughtfully biting on her lower lip while running light fingers over the charter. Seen in the reflected light from the moon and distant snow outside, the silks of the Lace Serpent were undone in _just_ the right way to entice his imagination. He cursed Tywin Lydden all over again. “I think Tywin Lannister might not be as clever as he thinks he is.”

“Clever or not, he’s gone too far.” Denys turned away from the window. “And I promise you now, that man will die screaming.”

The walls of Duskendale shimmered palely in the predawn as the Keeper of the Wise plotted murder.


	26. Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (The Storm)

## THE STORM

“-. 274 AC .-“

Gods below, King’s Landing smelled like shit! Even after his prior visits, the stench was so overpowering that he nearly fell over as soon as they entered the harbour. Which would have been an embarrassing end to the glorious epic of his life, seeing as he was standing atop the Windproud’s highest spar at the time! Fortunately, he was able to climb down the rigging without suffering anything more serious than rope burn. Not that Cressen fussed over him any less, but that was par for the course with the good maester. Honestly, that man! And he didn’t have the decency to even pretend at having the same problem. Goes to show what sort of iron stomach tasting piss every morning gets you.

They arrived half-way through low tide while the bigger quays were already occupied, so the Windproud couldn’t dock outright, having to instead lay anchor out in the shallows. That was all to the good though! It let him send a few men ahead of their own boat to ready horses and scout out the situation, as it were. Which they did most gallantly!

If only he could say the same about the news, but he couldn’t! It wasn’t gallant! It wasn’t gallant at all!

One frantic dash to their new mounts and a positively _unheroic_ charge to the Red Keep later, Steffon Baratheon barged into the Great Hall just in time to hear the tail-ends of the _verdict_.

“-the gall to present yourself now, after all is said and done, and claim no part! You, whose forebears all but dispossessed House Targaryen during the Dance of Dragons! You sit there professing innocence as if we should be unaware that Hightower has always played both sides whenever others sought to usurp the Seven Kingdoms and its way of life! The streets of Oldtown are red with the blood of those you silenced, and still you’d have me believe you and yours were wholly nonbelligerent! Even though your actions are the singular reason why none may make any account of the truth! And now you _dare_ mock the Gods as well, throwing my offer of Trial by Battle in my face! But then you would, wouldn’t you? You Hightowers never fight a battle you don’t stack, why would you start here? I wonder, is there even anyone left that would speak for you now?”

“Forsooth!” Steffon bellowed, pushing past the last gawkers into the open. “Who cares about speaking _for_ him, I’ve a mind to speak _at_ him a spell! You!”

Lord Leyton Hightower stared at him from where he was kneeling at the foot of the throne, two Kingsguard swords crossed at his neck.

“Yes, you! What’s wrong with you? Stop gawking, man! So what if everyone’s a pussy and won’t fight for you? Who cares if it’s a Kingsguard pulling the other sword? So what if you don’t think you’ll win, you should still try! Oh, it’s hopeless so there’s no point in trying, is that it? You want to preserve some last shred of glory instead of dying ignobly, is that it? Who cares if it steals your last shred of glory!? Glory is for the soldier! For the levy, the warrior, for the writer of songs! A paltry comfort for those who need it, barely any reward at all! The shiny liquor to numb the pain of atrocity! We’re high lords, we don’t get to indulge this fantasy! There’s just two things we get to rely on: duty and sense! Your duty to your people and your duty to the cause, whatever it is! Will you just sit there quietly, not doing your part? Your people did their duty, didn’t they? They sacrificed for the cause, and then were sacrificed when they strayed from it, isn’t that right? It’s your turn now! If your duty is to know when that sacrifice must come, then you’ve already failed once, haven’t you? Are you going to fail again? So much for sense! Sense isn’t just about seeing all paths to victory, it’s about sacrifice with clarity! Don’t fall so hard for one path that you ignore the others! Or will you reject the way forward because the things that drove you to this point happen to suck balls? Only a fool is ruled by pain or emotion! Only the weak try to cut themselves off these feelings instead of controlling them! Don’t numb yourself to survival or death, whether yours or anyone else’s, or you’re as good as dead! The dead do no good for anyone!”

The Great Hall of the Red Keep fairly shook as if beset by gale winds, as well it should! Then everyone everywhere looked at the Lord of Storm’s End and Paramount of the Stormlands as if they couldn’t even begin to comprehend his great wisdom, as usual. Even Tywin from up next to the throne. He even had the nerve to close his eyes as if in pain, the goldilocked shite! Never mind that he was only speaking common sense!

“…Lord Baratheon.”

“My king!” Steffon beamed. “Thank the gods these pressures are not imposing on you unduly, you almost look self-possessed! I wouldn’t look _half_ as kept if I were beset by so many rats, let alone if I’d suffered so many ‘losses’ in my family.” He took a pause after air quoting to inspect Aerys’ appearance properly. When he was done, he let his public smile be replaced by his other, warmer one. “I’m glad.”

Aerys seemed taken aback. By his warmth? Or maybe his honesty? Maybe he was just shocked to see him at all. He could never tell with him, Targaryens were always so dramatic!

“Steffon,” Aerys sighed, slumping back on the Iron Throne only to jerk in place with a hiss as he cut himself on some blade or other. Something ugly overtook his face. “ _Lord_ Baratheon. You were not called to speak.”

“I wasn’t summoned to Court either, Your Grace, yet here I am.”

“Yes, as my own eyes inform me.” The king’s tone sounded beset by some dark something Steffon didn’t bother dwelling on. “And as my _ears_ just informed me that you interrupted the King’s Justice to indulge a rant in the middle of my hall. Of all the gall you’ve ever shown, this one overshadows them all. You’d better have a _very_ good explanation!”

“I beg forgiveness, your grace, even if I can’t promise not to do it again, this cannot be borne! Seeing a man strive for the lowest of the low is like watching people try for the middle ground, it’s just silly! Nobody ever knows how to be entirely good or entirely bad, how the hell are you supposed to know what balance even is? The only thing you should ever strive towards is your best! This is nobody’s best!”

For a moment the court seemed to be acting as a single being, unified in its disbelief at the balls it took to come out and say that with a straight face. Tywin in particular was looking down at him as if he doubted his sanity. Shows what they know! Long as you believe what you’re saying, there’s nothing easier than keeping a straight face! Now to see if Aerys took that as an attack on him, in which case he might need to-

“Treachery!” Came hollering from behind. “Treachery! Despoiler! Heresy!”

The High Septon barged into the throne room via the main entrance instead of a side door like Steffon had. His High Holiness looked windswept, dishevelled and frothing at the mouth, almost.

“Heresy! Blasphemy! Murder!”

“Oh ford Gods’ sake!” Aerys slammed a fist against his armrest. Steffon was relieved when he didn’t cut himself on anything. “What _now?_ ”

Right then and there, in the midst of a lord’s trial in the Great Hall of the Red Keep in King’s Landing, the High Septon went on a long, shrieking rant about Oldtown, House Hightower, _septons being killed in the streets_ , and how Lord Leyton being a breath away from being burned alive could _only_ be part of some master plan to distract from this atrocity being inflicted on the Faith of the Seven. _Obviously_.

Wait a second… “Septons are being killed in the streets!?”

The King’s Court almost erupted in a riot if not for Ser Guayne Gaunt of the Kingsguard grabbing the spear from one of the sentries and slamming it against the marble floor. Several times.

Loudly.

“You must answer this vile butchery immediately!” The High Septon screamed at the King, proving that his ability to read the room was as skewed as the crystal crown wobbling on his head. “When King Jaehaerys the Conciliator refused to repeal Maegor the Cruel’s decree that the Faith Militant be disbanded, he did so with the promise that House Targaryen take up defense of the Faith in its stead! Never has the Iron Throne failed in this charge so utterly! I _demand_ that-!”

“YOU DO NOT MAKE DEMANDS OF YOUR KING!”

Aerys Targaryen’s screech was like the scratchy bellow of a dragon having its wings torn out.

His High Holiness reared back as if struck and the crystal crown clattered to the floor. When it came to a halt at Steffon’s feet, it was cracked straight through.

When the chamber was once more settled, insofar as it could after such ‘excitement,’ King Aerys Targaryen the Second sat back down on the monstrosity of swords, rubbed his temple and glared down at the kneeling man.

“Well? What have you to say on all this, Lord Hightower?”

“My son moves even faster than I expected,” the man replied with all the fatalism of one secure in the knowledge that his end had arrived one way or another. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given the strong emotion that youth and idealism tends to engender against _child-buggering shitstains_.”

… What.

A black cloud gathered in Steffon’s stomach as the court erupted into uproar anew. He batted it away. Later. He’d deal with this new revelation later, when his current task was done.

The High Septon went to speak again, but Ser Gaunt had approached by then, sword hilt held in warning.

Lord Hightower continued with that same parody of composure. “Perhaps I was wrong to keep the knowledge from my heir for so long, but I still hoped my investigation of the Citadel’s rot might turn out sufficient information to deal with this _other_ matter more delicately. The Starry Sept couldn’t be in on such things, I told myself. The Mansions of the Pious could not be _entrenched_ with _child buggering shitstains_ , I told myself.” Four ladies of the more _delicate_ persuasion fainted in the background. “Unfortunately, in my disbelief I disregarded the truth until it was too late. Perhaps I _chose_ not to believe, lest other, darker suspicions prove true as well. After all, if the maesters and septons could work in lockstep to prey on the young in the Scribe’s Hearth, what _else_ might they be collaborating on?”

The High Septon’s apoplectic state suddenly shifted into something closer to horror.

“Whether or not my inaction emboldened the grey rats into committing to their insane agenda, I know not. But that it allowed them the _time_ to overstep so soundly is undeniable. And so here I am come to account for my inaction. _Only_ for my inaction.” Leyton Hightower looked up at the king with all the self-assurance of a man who’d just made it sound like his inaction was the only reason the grey rats had been exposed at all, and therefore he had done them all a favour. “If I am to get a last request, it is merely that my heir’s actions receive fair judgment. In the words spoken just now by the High Septon himself, the King is the Shield of the Faith. As my son is but striving to cut out the canker eating at the foundation of our people’s spiritual pillar, he is only carrying out Your Grace’s will and the will of the Seven.”

“You will not claim to be doing the Seven’s will!” The High Septon screamed. “You-you… you butcher! Do not make claims of virtue, when your own spawn does nothing but sit back and watch the sheep set themselves upon their own shepherds!”

“Wait, what?” Steffon asked when everyone else proved too much of a pussy to speak up. “I thought you said he was the one doing the purging?”

“There is nothing to purge!” The High Septon roared before Steffon had a chance to realise how his choice of words could be taken. His High Holiness then went on a second, even longer rant about heresy, butchery, _septons being lynched in the streets_ not by knights or guards but by _smallfolk_ , and how House Hightower had no right to claim any moral high standing in the whole mess. “You have no _right_ to claim to be doing the Seven’s will!” The High Septon’s spittle flew everywhere as he proved once and for all his determination to go down in history as House Hightower’s greatest asset. “Your son does nothing but play at trying to contain the madness! All the ravens are clear!”

There was a brief moment of stillness, then the revelation sunk and the Court went in an uproar again, because of course it did. This time, though, Steffon couldn’t fault them for it. It was one thing for a member of the nobility to seek retribution in blood against the Faith for whatever reason. Even for House Hightower and their ancestral ties with the Starry Sept, the common word for that was ‘folly.’ But for the _smallfolk_ to be the ones lynching their spiritual shepherds in the streets… well, that spoke of _vastly_ different things.

Steffon Baratheon watched Leyton Hightower for signs that his surprise at the sudden news was feigned. He couldn’t find any. Then he watched the High Septon, wondering how such an imprudent man even got the post. Maybe he should look into the septs and septries in his own demesne too, he thought with dismay, and how _their_ holy priests got appointed. If something so disgusting was happening in the heart of the Faith itself, how much worse would it be _outside_ the sight of the great beacon?

When Steffon looked up at the throne, it was to see Aerys one word away from calling for everybody’s heads and letting the Seven sort the mess out themselves.

“My king,” Steffon called before sense lost its grip on the eye of the storm entirely. He stepped forward and put a friendly hand on the High Septon’s shoulder. “Before we were interrupted, you asked me for an explanation.”

“You-“ His High Holiness choked off as Steffon’s grip on his shoulder turned tighter. Just a tad.

“…I did indeed,” Aerys ground out at length, his voice turned raspy and his fists tight on the sides of the Iron Throne. “Go ahead then. Tell me. Why are you here?”

“Because a dear friend is here and he needs me. Word reached me by wind and wave of plots most foul and grim done upon him and his by the most despicable, dastardly miscreants! I waited for word from him. I wrote him. Sent runners even. All to no avail! I know not if it was treachery or if he’s decided he only deserves my friendship when things are bright and well. Either way, I could not bear it! So here I am! I’ve brought stout men to stand guard against further insult and injury. I’ve brought my healer, a man loyal and true. And I’ve brought myself, because with all respect to Your Grace, fair-weather friendship can go fuck itself! If my King permits, I would attend to my friend as soon as can be.”

What followed was a very long _something_ like the quiet in Storm’s End’s Hall of Legacy, except without the pleasant chill of the underearth. The looks had nothing on the dignified seemings of the Durrandon statues and carvings there either. The court, the High Septon, Lord Hightower, even Tywin looked upon him with nothing but incredulity. To say the absolute least. The Others bugger them all very much.

“I…” And above them all, King Aerys of House Targaryen looked like he didn’t know if he should feel disbelieving or stricken. “… I-I’ll allow it.”

Steffon Baratheon made no mystery of his joy. If only Aerys could bear it!

He couldn’t. Instead, the king stood from his throne and looked anywhere but at him. “Lord Hightower’s trial will be deferred until these newest… developments can be taken into proper consideration. Court is adjourned.”

“All rise!” Thundered the voice of Lord Commander Harlan Grandison. “All rise for Aerys Targaryen, the Second of His Name, by the grace of the Old Gods and New Gods, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.”

“-. .-“

Court that day ended to the fatalistic bemusement of the condemned, the sputtering apoplexy of the holy, and a general state of bewilderment from all other ends.

A fine day’s work!

Now, first thing’s first: annoy Tywin!

“Tywin!” Steffon crowed on entering the solar of the Hand of the King. “Old friend! You old mouser!”

“Steffon. What are you doing.”

“I am hugging my friend!” Steffon bellowed in Tywin’s ear because the uptight arse always cringed so _beautifully_. “Don’t think I missed those looks, you cantankerous shite!” He rubbed his cheek into the man’s goldilocks a few times just to tangle them in his beard. Then he snuck a kiss to the man’s crown before pulling away, because Tywin’s mama didn’t live long enough to do that job and, by all the Gods, he’d either fill that void or the look on goldilocks’ face will kill him. One way or the other, he always had his way!

Ah, friendship! The duty that never ends!

Tywin beat a most dignified retreat behind his massive mahogany desk.

What a sad day! You should never retreat in the face of true love!

“You are far too jolly after what all transpired.”

“And you’re still a fucking dandy.” Steffon needed only glance around the office to prove his point. Gods, his green livery clashed with Tywin’s décor something fierce. Even the gold stag embroidered on his tunic didn’t fit the rest of the gold and red. With how fancy everything was in the Red Keep, you could almost forget the city just outside was an utter cesspool of disease where more people died than were born because they only ate bread and cheese.

“I’d almost believe that was a deflection if I hadn’t just seen you exhibit the same lack of subtlety as ever. Your skill in double speak is even more atrocious than before.”

“I’m deferring judgment!” Steffon ignored the barb. Maesters being cunts? Hightower being Hightower? Child buggering septons that he’d murder with his bare hands wherever he found them? Bah! “I didn’t come here for any of that.”

“You should be ashamed of that display in the hall.”

“Never.”

There was silence between them, and not entirely of the comfortable kind. Not that silences involving Tywin Lannister could ever be comfortable, the man was as prickly as an eldmother’s tongue on a good day. This was pricklier than usual though. But wait, that was a good sign! If the man hadn’t grown new barbs after finding out his maester was a traitorous cunt that might or might not have done despicable things to his wife and children, now _that_ would be a problem!

Steffon inspected the other man. “You’ve been working yourself to distraction, haven’t you? That’s not right! You should let yourself grieve first! Otherwise you’ll just make shit decisions!”

“Do I look grief-stricken to you?”

“No, that’s my point!”

“My ability to make decisions is unimpaired, I assure you.”

“I’d take you at your word if you hadn’t told me yourself to never do that. Constantly. For the entirety of the Ninepenny war.”

Tywin said nothing, pulling a parchment to read instead.

“You’re determined to make this awkward, aren’t you?” Steffon did not hide his amusement. “You really think you can do me one better? Really?”

Tywin sighed in his chair and pinched his nosebridge. “Must you be so exhausting?”

“That you tire of me so quickly only shows how exhausting everything is in the rest of your life! That’s my point!”

“That’s not a point, it’s an opinion.” The other man affected his well-honed impression of a stone. “Are you done?”

“Of course not!”

“I thought as much. As per usual, you will not be satisfied until you’ve driven me to wonder why I even suffer you.”

“Oh please. If you didn’t have me, you’d have no joy in your life at all!”

Tywin’s return look could easily be described in words, but Steffon decided to be gracious and spare him the humbling. This once. “Don’t give me that look,” Steffon said instead. “You know you love me.”

“What I am is approaching the point where I wonder why I still haven’t had you assassinated.”

“Because you _love_ me.”

“Steffon…” Tywin Lannister sighed in that condescending way of Tywin Lannister when he was being condescending without wanting to admit to himself he was being condescending because he didn’t want to acknowledge he wasn’t allowed to be condescending to his peers lest he face the reality that there were such things as peers instead of everyone else in the world being mere sheep to be lorded over. The cunt.

Unfortunately for the prickly lion, he didn’t get to vent his misaimed condescension because that was when Ser Jonothor Darry of the Kingsguard arrived. Came with orders to lead Steffon to a private audience with the king at his pleasure.

That was always double speak for ‘right now’ so of course Steffon disregarded it entirely and bid Darry to wait while he sent his former castellan to fetch Maester Cressen. The proud Ser Harbert looked like he wanted to protest being made a dogsbody but held his tongue. As well he should! Ser Arsehole was still in the kennels for being such a shit to his boy. Honestly, that poor bird had barely healed! Of course a few weeks wouldn’t be enough to train it!

Gods, with uncles like this, who needs in-laws?

“So, my Lord Hand! Any advice?”

“… King Aerys is his father’s son,” Tywin reluctantly deigned to enlighten him. “And his father was his father’s son before him.”

“Why thank you, Lord Lannister, that tells me a whole lot of dog shit. Now pull the other one.”

“Don’t try to force his Grace to love you.”

“What!?” Steffon roared. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’d never do that!”

“You’ve been trying just that this whole time,” Tywin said, reaching for his wine goblet.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Love is like a fart. If you have to force it, it’s probably just crap anyway!”

Bugger didn’t spittake, the uptight arse. All these years and still not one success. Oh well, one day.

One day!

The walk to the King’s chambers was long and solemn. _Very_ long and solemn. They had to leave the Tower of the Hand, cross over to the far end of Maegor’s Holdfast, and navigate around and up several staircases and corridors before they reached their destination. Once there, the other Kingsguard on watch denied Cressen entry. Oh well, nothing to it then!

He put his hands on the maester’s small, bony shoulders and smiled. “Wait here. It’ll be alright.”

Cressen didn’t look reassured.

As usual, no one believed him when it counted. It was like people up to his most trusted were incapable of understanding the simple truth that that he’d never said a lie in his life.

Lord Steffon of the House Baratheon was ushered into the sight of Aerys Targaryen standing near a desk and staring at a candle flame in what he _knew_ weren’t his normal apartments. Both because he’d been in them before, and because the present ones had no windows.

There, finally, was the king. Tall, haggard, platinum-haired, and wearing the fakest look of scorn as if it could hide that he was more nervous than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

When the door closed with the solid thunk of freshly oiled hinges, Steffon struck.

He stormed towards the man, pulled his dagger –

“Wha-GUARDS!”

\- went to his knees, laid the blade at the king’s feet and raised his folded hands just as the door slammed open.

Steffon kept his head bowed and waited.

“… Guard,” Aerys finally rasped, sounding shook. “… A chair for my guest.”

There was a brief pause, then the sound of armored feet and the closing of the door. Steffon stayed as he was until the man returned with the seat and left again.

Aerys took Steffon’s hands in his own. Slowly. Hesitatingly. “… Rise, my lord.”

Steffon stood and loomed over the king in the dimness. It seemed as though it was closer to midnight than midday, such was the sparseness of the light in that well-appointed, awful place. Neither of them remarked on the room being already furnished with a lounge and four different chairs.

Aerys had his eyes averted and made to back away, so Steffon took _his_ hands in his own instead, stopping him in his tracks. “Stark’s raven and then nothing. Hours going up and down Storm’s End asking questions of my son and my household. Days spent verifying my maester’s loyalty. Weeks of ravens flying between Storm’s End and every childless lord and widower that could serve as interim castellan, and who had a maester that could be spared in Cressen’s stead. And yet I’d have dropped it all instantly if you’d just called for me. Instead, I had to learn of things from hearsay. From rumors. _Sailors at the docks_ , Aerys, why didn’t you _call_ for me?”

“I needn’t explain myself to you!” The king hissed, pulling away. “You have no claim to the thoughts of your king. You are but the Crown’s _servant_. Remember that!”

“As you say,” Steffon nodded. “I’ll spare you my mind and see to my friend’s wellbeing instead, if my king’s leave still stands?”

Aerys bit back several things he wanted to say, looked away with something that could have been either spite or shame, and backed away until he fell in the nearest, biggest chair.

Steffon stood in the near-darkness and waited.

“… It stands.”

“I’m glad.” Steffon walked forward and forewent any seating, going instead to one knee before the other man. He watched him for a while. Waited for the man to grow comfortable with him so close. Even with how tall Aerys was, Steffon still stood as tall as his chin and twice as broad. When Aerys didn’t look like he was about to bolt anymore, he reached into a belt pouch and began pulling out grooming tools one after another, setting them on the ground over his handkerchief. He was no fucking dandy, thank you very much, but that didn’t change the fact that looking as good as he did was hard work!

Steffon picked up the comb and began working on the end of Aerys’ long beard. “My friend seems to have suffered some small injuries to his person due to the nature of his work. I would bring in my healer to tend to him. Will my king allow it?”

The beard felt almost like silk. Figured that even the longest and thickest Targaryen beard would feel smoother than a woman’s hair.

“…Do you vouch for him?”

“With my life.”

“… Why?”

Steffon snorted. “Because dear old dad was too optimistic, that’s why!” Silky or not, that there beard was right tangled. “Turns out old Cressen was suspicious of certain Citadel rats since before he even made it out of there. Going to my father with his concerns was the first thing he did. Unfortunately, he didn’t really have any real evidence and my father dismissed his worries. Can’t even blame the old man, ancestors hold him, who would have ever believed the maesters were up to no good?”

“Who indeed?” Aerys asked bitterly.

Steffon continued grooming the king, knowing that forgetfulness was the last thing he should worry about when it came to Aerys Targaryen.

“If your maester proves treacherous, your head will roll right along his.”

“As you say.”

Cressen was ushered in. The old maester looked rather harassed and a tad less well kept than earlier, but he mastered himself quickly and went to inspect the king as fastidiously as always.

Steffon worked with Cressen to help the king bare himself down to the waist. Then he resumed combing the royal beard while Cressen poked, prodded and wiped at the royal arms and back with his cloths and tinctures.

“The old cuts have scabbed and I’ve cleaned the latest wounds, your Grace,” Cressen said when Steffon was just about done smoothing out the royal whiskers. “But I can see some signs of potential infection. I can apply boiled wine or Myrish Fire, but it works best on skin freshly washed.”

“We’ll have a bath drawn up,” Steffon said blithely. “That is, if my king approves?”

“… I’ll allow it.”

Steffon smiled gladly and squeezed the king’s hands in thanks, then stood, went to retrieve his knife, came back and began to inspect the royal nails. A murder weapon wasn’t what he’d usually use for this, but this time it might be warranted. Them dragons grew some right gnarly claws when they let themselves go.

He spent the time it took the servants to draw a bath cutting back the nails, cutting them even further with his small field shears, then polishing them with his nail file. Aerys was looking at him fairly strangely by the end. Steffon beamed. “Never leave home without it!”

“… You are ridiculous.”

“And handsome! I would like to get my friend cleaned up now, if my king allows?”

The look Aerys gave him… Steffon couldn’t see it well in the darkness, but his raw voice made it unnecessary regardless. “… I’ll allow it.”

He helped the king undress and get into the bath, then sat on a chair next to him to wash his hair while Cressen bathed him and fussed over the man’s arms and back, keeping a running tally of every nick and scrape and what he was doing to each. Steffon let the maester’s words wash over him as he cleaned the royal scalp, making sure to go slow and steady to give the good maester all the time he needed to carefully clean and treat all the cuts, new and old.

When he was done, Steffon helped the king out of the tub, led him to the lounge and held his hands while Cressen applied his treatments and bandages. Aerys closed his eyes and grit his teeth when the Myrish Fire had its turn, but said nothing. Only gripped Steffon’s hands tight while waiting for the pain to go away.

“I believe we are done,” Cressen said finally, wiping his hands with a cloth and beginning to pack his supplies back in the kit. Normally he’d have them spread in pockets all over his person, but Steffon had made him dress like a regular servant until things died down. Fortunately, winter meant the man was able to wear a scarf on the ride over, so that no one need see the chain around his neck. “I will need to check on the gauze and bandages every morning and evening for the next two or three days, but the chance of infection is as remote as it can be now.”

“I’ll decide that. Leave us.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Cressen nodded to the king, then to Steffon and left.

Steffon helped Aerys dress in fresh clothing and went to work on combing the royal hair. He made a show of doing one last inspection of the royal beard and hands as well. He manfully refrained from criticising the king’s dainty fingers. No proper warrior’s hands, these. He bent the knee and took the king’s hands in his own again instead, watching his face in the deepening darkness. “When did you last rest? Truly rest?”

What could be seen of the king’s face in that gloom was like a sneer of disgust twisted upon itself. The light cast by the lone candle played sinisterly over it. His shadow on the wall looked like a beasts biting its own neck.

When the silence broke again, it was Aerys that did it, though he spoke so lowly that Steffon didn’t understand a word.

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“…I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Oh.” Oh. “Alright then.”

“Nothing is alright!” Aerys barked before gritting his teeth against whatever else was about to come out. “You asked me earlier why I didn’t call for you.” Even that whispered admission seemed to pain the man. “That’s why.”

“Begging Your Grace’s pardon, that’s a shit reason.”

The noise that churned its way out of Aerys’ throat was so bizarre that Steffon only belatedly recognized it as laughter.

“How easily you judge!” The king pushed his hands away, stood and retreated from him. “How easily you judge your king. But then why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t it come easily to you? You, who never failed when it counted?”

“Well, you got me there.” Steffon stood as well.

Aerys seemed taken aback by his easy answer.

“What?” The Storm Lord felt a tad peeved himself now. “Self-deprecation isn’t a virtue and self-awareness isn’t a sin.”

“Why are you here, Steffon?”

“Because you’re my friend and I love you.”

The twisted noise that scratched its way from the king’s throat was no laughter at all.

Not for the first time, Steffon Baratheon wondered at the backwards thinking of most of mankind. If you know you’re good, morally consistent and at least moderately intelligent, didn’t it naturally follow that you’re probably better suited to speak sense than most everyone else? Who the hell decided that the right answer couldn’t also be the easy one?

“What do you know of love?” Aerys rasped, biting at his fist. “What can you know of love? You, who never had to work for it. You, who finds it so easy to love everyone before you even meet.” Aerys covered his eyes with a hand. “You, who are so terribly easy to love.”

“Ah!” Steffon realized. “You’re jealous of me!”

The words rung lugubriously in the ensuing stillness of the air.

“… Am I?”

“I guess so,” Steffon shrugged, ambling closer. “I forgive you.”

Aerys’ breath hitched.

“I forgive you for disregarding my feelings too. Leaving me to wait and worry for so long, honestly!”

“AND WHO ARE YOU TO FORGIVE _ME!?_ ” Aerys suddenly roared, turning and lashing out only to hit his hand on Steffon’s shoulder. The king grunted in pain and stumbled away but for Steffon’s firm hands catching him, but the gates to whatever inner hell this was were already open wide. “Who are you to forgive me? Do you even know what you’re saying? You think what I want is forgiveness!? You speak to me like I’m the one with sin!? How dare you!? What of the wrongs done upon _me_!? My father is dead! My daughter, dead! My sons, dead! Murdered, every one of them! Murdered for no reason than envy! And you have the gall to come here, professing _forgiveness_ for some imagined slights of _mine_! Think yourself exempt from punishment!? My own Grand Maester poisoned my children and I burned him! That bitch that last presumed to share my bed, I had her tortured! Tortured and killed like she deserved, her and all her wretched blood! I burned them! I burned them all! Don’t you _dare_ claim to be beyond reproach! You think you’re the first so deluded? You think Tywin didn’t claim the same? He came professing loyalty when he was already off trying his best to take advantage of all these crimes against me! I’ll-“

“Do you really fuck your kingsguard?”

The noise trying to squirm its way out of the king was like a hare being eaten alive.

“Because there’s this rumor that I just made up, see, that the real reason you keep them around is ‘cuz you like them bent over with their round, muscular arses up in the air so you can have your way with their strong, firm buttocks in all their hairy glory when your member goes and-“

King Aerys Targaryen burst into the harshest, loudest, most hysterical laughter to ever come out of the throat of a king. Then he lost all strength and collapsed where he stood, falling to his knees in Steffon’s arms who let himself fall too, gathering the king close as the laughter gave way to fat, ugly sobs that rose and fell and burst like pus from a wound, spilling out into the dark like poison without end.

The last candle burned low, then lower and then didn’t burn anymore at all.

The poison flowed and flowed for long after, spilling out into the world until the only madness left was of grief, tattered and hollow.

“-. .-“

Noon passed in darkness.

But when it was done, Steffon Baratheon led the king out of the dark into the day of his true chambers, where finally Aerys Targaryen, second of his name, laid down to truly rest for the first time since the white raven came, falling asleep with the light of the sun shining down upon him.

Steffon emerged from the royal apartments with a relieved heart, a sheet of paper in his hand, his head stuffed full with royal confessions sad and terrible, and a storm in his soul made of wind and fury. He looked at the two whitecloaks watching him with _almost_ wholly hidden amazement and held out the paper for them to read.

_It is by my order and for the good of the Realm that the bearer of this has done what he has done. – Aerys, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms._

He inquired as to their schedules and rotations, then worked with them to assign men from his retinue in place of the Goldcloaks normally watching the royal quarters. It was an unfair slight to the watchmen, but Aerys had seemed to draw strength from the offer no matter how off-handed.

 _“If this is supposed to be a test,”_ Steffon had said when Aerys gave him the Great Warrant. _“I won’t treat it as one. I’ll do whatever I think is right, not waste my time trying to guess what you want me to do.”_

Returning to the Tower of the Hand, he caught Tywin just as he was leaving his solar to retire. Steffon contained himself for only as long as it took to get some privacy before he gave him the what for he clearly needed. “Listen to me, Tywin, and listen well! From this point on you get _no_ more excuses! The king listened to me and heeded me, so you _will_ listen and heed me as well.” Steffon took a long, deep breath through his nose but did not relent his grip on Tywin’s shoulders. He leaned forward, looming over the scowling man with all his bulk behind him. “If you need to talk, talk to me. If you need a shoulder to cry on, cry on me. And if you can’t find it in you to suffer the presence of Joanna’s children, _any_ of Joanna’s children for _any_ reason, foster them with me. Do you understand?”

Tywin actually glared at him for that, but didn’t reply. Whether because he was too outraged at his presumption, or shocked that Aerys had actually come out and admitted that ‘Tywin looks at me like I fucked his wife and sired his children’ (never mind all the _timing_ issues involved), Steffon didn’t have the patience to care.

“Incidentally, Aerys was always going to reimburse you for that Citadel business.”

Steffon let go, turned around and left.

_“I’m not mad, Steffon, but that’s no mercy! You speak of sense? Sense tells me I can’t even be sure my kin and children fell to poison instead of the gods’ cruelty. Sense would have me feel guilt over my grief! What should I believe, Steffon? Do you have any idea what madness Pycelle spouted in his ravings? There was no difference between his lies and his truths by the end!_

His next stop was the dungeons.

 _“Do you know who he tried to bring down with him? Do you know how long this conspiracy has to have existed? Father, grandfather, Summerhall, the dragons, the Dance Itself! You think I’m the only one now wondering what really happened to them? And now this news of the Faith! There’s your madness! If I were mad, I’d burn Oldtown to the ground, Tywin’s head would be on a spike outside my window and this place would already be ash.”_ Aerys had barely been able to raise his voice by the end, when Steffon tucked him into bed. _“I’m not mad, Steffon.”_ His voice had been so weak. So frail. _“I’m not mad. Not yet.”_

The Black Cells were precisely as black as the name implied. But the special prisoners were being fed well, Leyton Hightower had only been there for a few hours, and Gerold Hightower had long since accustomed himself to his new environment and was doing handstand push-ups when Steffon let them out. Leyton gladly accepted relocation to Maegor’s holdfast, if still afflicted with that odd bemusement that only the condemned mustered when they were resigned to whatever came next. Gerold Hightower didn’t accept reinstatement though, not from anyone less than the king. He refused to go back to the White Sword Tower and only complied with ‘sentry’ duty for his nephew when Steffon told him flat out he’d have him escorted out of the dungeon at sword point if he didn’t show sense. A good man, that Ser Gerold, stout and true!

Way too uptight though.

Not as self-possessed as he liked to act either, once the light hit his eyes again.

The Storm Lord dithered somewhat when that was done, torn between several directions. In the end, the decision was taken out of his hands when the Master of Laws Symond Staunton descended upon him with many anxious questions. That particular meeting ended with an acknowledgment of his changes to the guard roster, and Cressen’s all but assured instatement as Grand Maester at the next meeting of the Small Council. Which would be early the next day. To which he was invited.

The sun had set almost entirely by the time he was alone again. Deciding that Tywin had had his fill of him for one day, and that it was too late in the evening to take care of a certain last bit of business, he went to tell Cressen the ‘grand’ news, had a late dinner and bedded down for the night.

Alas, the new dawn came not with a Small Council meeting! It brought instead a sudden call by the King for Court to congregate post-haste!

It was quick business. One brief announcement by the king, then the court dispersed again in a furor of gossip that left Steffon in sore need of personal time with friends and family that weren’t Ser Arsehole. Unfortunately, both his friends were the most obstinate shites imaginable and his only family nearby was his cousin the King.

The King who’d just made him Hand of the King.

“Well.” Steffon said. “Shit.”

“Yes,” Tywin said. “Quite.”

Oh well! Such was life!

“How would you like to be Master of Coin?”

Tywin scoffed derisively.

Considering how little emotion the man mustered on his worst day, that more or less confirmed everything about the relationship between Aerys and him that Steffon had been deferring judgment on.

“Well, I had to make the offer.”

As he stood in the Hand’s Solar on the other side of the desk compared to the prior day, Steffon Baratheon watched Tywin Lannister gather his personal effects. He thought to the last words his father ever told him. _Endure nothing_ , Ormund Baratheon had said as he lay dying. _Endure nothing from anyone, save the Lord Hand and the King._

Ormund Baratheon had been Hand of the King too, in his day. Steffon wondered what _he_ endured from his King, fresh out of the tragedy at Summerhall. Possibly nothing near what Tywin had to have endured from theirs. What he no doubt thought Steffon was about to. Shows what he knows!

“So.” Steffon sat down on Tywin’s obscenely comfortable gilded chair. “Do you have any advice _now_?”

“Do your job, expect no honors save having your competence trusted so highly that the king won’t shy away from being every bit as rude to you in public as you are to everyone, and leave your wife at home.”

“If I go without a good fuck for much longer, I’ll go nuttier than the both of you combined. Pull the other one.”

And for the love of Gods, Aerys, you don’t insult a woman’s breasts! Especially when she’s the wife of your childhood friend. Especially not in public! And Steffon still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of whether Aerys had cuckolded Tywin or not, honestly, that man! And what role did Joanna play in all this? There’s not speaking ill of the dead and then there’s thinking the dead were perfect saints. Both were complete dog shit!

Right! Moving on! “Well?”

Tywin paused and pinched his nosebridge, then gave him a long, considering look, walked over to the desk, leaned over to dig through the bottom right drawer and pulled out two tubes made of elder wood, from which he took out great scrolls, fancy as all get with golden ink decorating the edges. The man put them both before him with a sharp gaze of consideration, then went back to his business.

Steffon read them one after another. Then he read them both side by side. Then again. Then again. Then he bowed forward and rested his brow on his clasped hands.

Tywin was speaking now, about intrigue and politics and knowing when to set, when to curb, and never bend. Teaching him. Advising him just like he’d requested. He even sounded like he meant what he was saying. Of the rule of law to crush the braying of mob and ambition. Of how there was never an end to the paltry feuds and lowly ambitions of upstarts that needed putting in their place.

“This Citadel Town Charter is the greatest snarl I’ve seen since the so-called reforms of King Aegon,” said the proud lion. “But it’s only the first of many snarls you’ll be expected to unknot. By now you will have noticed the different wording. There’s a reason I’ve yet to deposit either scroll in the Archives. The wording may be blatant to coin-counters, but to an up-jumped trader like Darklyn?”

Steffon Baratheon listened grimly as Tywin Lannister explained his great trap.

If Darklyn somehow managed to get through Tywin’s iron grip on the Red Keep, the wording was by design ambiguous enough that he could dismiss it as a small misunderstanding if brought up to the King. After all, they all worked together on the document, the Hand, the Master of Laws and Lord Denys Darklyn himself, with final reading and sealing by himself the King. It would be madness to think the Hand would ever sabotage the effort in the eleventh hour. But the Hand gets the 'honor' of doing the drudge work, so who’s to say what could have happened during the final write-up? Mistakes could easily slip by the scribe’s hand while putting down the final charter on the fancy scroll. Who would dare accuse the Hand of sabotaging the Crown itself? More like it was a moment of inattention, a brief spell of exhaustion, the scribe failed to control his penchant for flowery courtly language and he, Tywin Lannister, will certainly hasten to write up an amended paper at once!

What grand a scheme. A spark of brilliance. A masterstroke, isn’t it just so?

“You never meant for him to stay quiet about it. You meant it as a warning.”

“Quite so.”

“This could beggar them.”

“Don’t be a fool, Steffon. Even without leave to install whatever system of governance he can dream up, which can render moot this whole issue in a hundred different ways, that was never the point.”

 _The point was to make him grovel and beg_. “And if he doesn’t bring it up, it gives you, or whoever next becomes Hand or King, grounds to go after their entire House in the future regardless of how Darklyn interprets it.”

“If he is enough of a fool to do that, he deserves every consequence.”

Or maybe he just believes in Tywin Lannister’s reputation, down to the most dark and gruesome parts he bought for himself in the blood of drowned children.

“I admit I didn't expect the man to catch the issue from a single skim in the throne room,” Tywin admitted. “But he is no threat. One minor lord will make no difference to the number of lesser houses that will disdain you for your high office as a matter of course, so you needn’t worry there is any greater risk of poison in your wine beyond what the position of Hand brings along. As for armed recourse, that you can safely discount. What are you doing?”

_I’m thinking I shouldn’t feel so inconvenienced for wanting to enjoy the King’s Peace._

Steffon finished writing his raven message – it always surprised people to learn his big hands could write such small letters instead of relying on a maester for it – then he put the pen away, rose and headed for the door. More precisely, the men standing guard right outside. “Harbert. Take this.” He gave Ser Arsehole the charter. The real one. Because for all his cuntish ways, he was loyal and brave. “To be delivered directly into the hands of Lord Denys Darklyn at the Dun Fort in Duskendale. You leave at noon. Now get me the Grand Maester.”

Steffon closed the door. There was a storm gathering at his breast, large and clamorous.

“… I should have known.”

Steffon went to the nearby sconce and held the fake charter over the candlelight.

“I should have known,” Tywin ground from behind as the gilded scroll caught fire. “As always when faced with a knot of any kind, your first and only instinct is to cut it and damn the consequences.”

And what of the consequences of tying the knot to begin with? “Are you sure you want to discuss knots with me, Tywin?” The storm frothed wildly. “I’m more of a sailor than you are.”

“Hardly.”

The storm tossed and foamed in the depths of his lungs, but now he knew what this other friend of his needed. “Then maybe you’ll indulge in a story. Why, I just remembered one! There’s this friend of mine, see. He’s a hard man. Been a hard man doing the hard decisions for a long time now. It’s given him quite the fearsome reputation at home! Unfortunately, he’s still just a man, this good friend of mine. Alas! He’s been digging his own family's hole diplomacy-wise, what with nobody daring to talk about him. Makes it awkward when wholesale slaughter’s his only go-to when touting his own horn, if you follow me. Terrible business! Between that and all the nepotism in the capital and whatnot, methinks he’s locked himself into this pattern where all this being the hard man making the hard decisions makes him miss it when the hard decision isn’t the right one. Robs you of other options, that, especially in the long run. The real irony, though? He was _this_ close to having all the snags in his foreign affairs done and solved. I mean sure, the Dornish are oathbreaking, guest-right-defiling cunts probably involved in the slave trade, but they were _this_ close.”

“I am not laughing, Steffon.”

The storm whined. “Of course you’re not. If it were up to you, I’d never laugh again either and then you’d have no joy in your life at all.”

He wasn’t joking, and by how quiet it got behind him, Tywin damn well knew it. But then, Steffon wasn’t joking before either.

“…Get to the point or we’re done.”

“Your wife just died.” Steffon deliberately looked everywhere but Tywin because he knew the man wouldn’t allow himself to feel anything if there was someone watching. “But instead of doing the human thing and _grieving_ , you pushed all your spite over her death onto your baby boy, and then your hate at your baby onto a different party entirely. The same way you pushed your hatred of your father onto the Reynes and Tarbecks, except this time it was people who had nothing to do with it. You shat all over the efforts and legacy of the beloved wife who'd arranged the windfall in the first place. Says a lot that you acted the exact same way in both cases, doesn't it? Except while Tytos Lannister was someone you looked down on and hated, Joanna was the one you most loved and respected.”

“You dare.”

“You are wracked with a perverted sentimentality. You’re as free with your contempt as your father was with his charity. Tytos Lannister spent his love and affection freely while you don’t give out any. You spend your spite and hate freely, while your father didn’t give out any. You’re the opposite sides of the same coin because you’re both insecure maids that _overcompensate_.”

“Enough!”

Steffon flicked the ash off his fingertips and turned around. “You are your father’s son.”

Tywin Lannister snarled, literally snarled for the first time in Steffon Baratheon’s recollection. A gruesome darkness passed over his whole face in that moment. It could have been betrayal. It could have been hate.

Steffon Baratheon watched Tywin Lannister all but throw the last of his effects into a bag, sidled just barely to the side of the door as if to get out of the way, waited until Tywin made to get past him, then he struck.

The storm bubbled over and burst out into the world like a hot summer rain.

“Steffon!” Tywin ground his teeth. Literally ground his teeth. “What. Are. You. Doing.”

“I’m hugging my friend!” Steffon burst into tears all over the prickly arse who just couldn’t bear living if he didn’t make everyone and everything fall to pieces around him, the fucking arsehole! “You told me a lord isn’t a true lord unless he can be an arse when he needs to! But this isn’t you being an arse when you need to! This is you being an arse when you _don’t_ need to! I can’t follow you down this slope! I won’t! But you don’t have to do it! Don’t go!”

“Oh for Gods’ sakes-“

“No!”

“You-.”

“NAY!”

“Let me go.”

“I SHAN’T!”

“Let me _go_ , Baratheon.”

“You said my name! My other name! You’re upset! That’s good! You don’t let yourself go enough! So what if you’re not perfect? Everyone makes mistakes! Even if you don’t, you’re not the first person to make no mistakes and still lose! That’s not weakness! That’s life! Why the hell won’t you live it instead of-of-of this horseshit you dumb fuck!?”

“You’ve gone mad.”

“You’re the mad one, you skittering fuckweasel! Mad with grief, you and-”

“-don’t-“

“-Aerys too!” Steffon sobbed.

“I swear by all the Gods, if you don’t-!”

“You don’t believe in gods! Dramatic shitstains the both of you, a pox on shit parents everywhere, it’s like you’re both _determined_ to treat common sense and all of its arcane offshoots like, oh, _love and kindness_ as if they’re something unfathomable and impossible to understand, you _MORONS_!” Steffon was yelling and shaking Tywin by the shoulders by the end. “What the hell is so hard to understand about being friends!?”

“Gods,” Tywin wheezed. “Why have you forsaken me?”

“Because you told them to take a hike, you decrepit omelette!”

“…Unhand me or I won’t be responsible for-“

“NO!” Steffon bawled, wrapping himself around the man even tighter. “You’ll have to kill me! Stab me with that knife why don’t you! Do me a favour, why don’t you!? Go on, do it! I dare you! What about me huh!? What about my feelings, huh? You can’t expect me to just stop loving someone! Go ahead, do it! Do it already! Why won’t you do it? You won’t do it! I knew you wouldn’t do it, you don’t just stop loving someone once you’ve started you-you… you emaciated cave goblin!”

“Of for Gods’ sakes…”

Tywin Lannister sighed gustily and settled to wait for Steffon Baratheon to finish blubbering out his hugs, tears and snot all over the man’s hair.

Once the steel pole up his arse finished giving way back to his normal one made of prickly rosewood, Steffon reluctantly disentangled himself from the smaller man, took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Loudly.

Then he checked the door to see if Cressen had arrived at any point, which he had. “Here,” he held out the crumpled paper. “For the Dun Fort. Might need to transcribe it first.”

Cressen all but fled from the sight of them.

Which was fair.

Steffon blew his nose again, folded the handkerchief with the clean side out and gave Tywin a once over. The look on Tywin’s face as he rubbed him clean of all the tears and snot was like a dead-eyed zombie promising murder.

Oh well. “I’ll ride with you.”

The Lord of Casterly Rock stared at him like he was some foul beast from the Seven Hells. “… _Fine_.”

Steffon beamed, hugged Tywin one last time, led him out past the suspiciously straight-faced guards, dragged him deep into Maegor’s Holdfast to have the former Hand take his proper leave of the king – they were both so civil! – and then rode with Tywin and his retinue out of Red Keep all the way to the docks.

“I meant what I said before.” Steffon clasped arms with the other man at the foot of the gangplank. “Talk to me. Write to me. Send your-“

“I know,” Tywin said harshly, though his heart wasn’t in it. “I know you meant it.”

“You damn well better! I never say anything I don’t mean!”

“It will be the death of you one day.”

“And I’ll die laughing!”

Tywin glared at him, as if it was somehow impossible that someone could both laugh and take things seriously at the same time. Then again, that _was_ Tywin’s main probl- “… I’m leaving part of my men here.”

Steffon blinked, astonished.

“At least until you bring more of yours, though you’ll have to dismiss them yourself if you want them gone.”

“You _do_ love me!”

“Goodbye, Steffon.”

“I love you too, Tywin. Be well!”

Steffon Baratheon stood on the berth and waved until the Sea Lion disappeared from view.

Then he returned to the Red Keep and went to the Maidenvault.

It had not escaped him that none of the King’s family were at court that day, or the day prior.

The music didn’t escape him either.

_The night you return, we're having a feast_

_The candles will burn, you've conquered the East_

_Get home safe, as you can't be replaced,_

_The honors you've earned, you fought like a beast,_

The harp strings and verses reached him before he got there. They were both graceful, beautiful and a right buggering to the soul. Didn’t use any oil to ease the kick either. Damn. Guess them sister wives don’t make for much better bedding than being a right royal arse did.

_So let's toast in your name, raise your glass to the moon,_

_Shall we dine with the gods, here's a toast, here's a toast to you!_

_Painting the map with the blood on your hand,_

_Expanding the realm, and winning new lands,_

_Get home safe, cause you can't be replaced,_

_The night you return, we're having a feast._

_The night you return, we're having a feast_

_The candles will burn the night you return…_

He waited with Darry outside the door until the last words faded, but wasted no time upon going in.

“Your Grace!” Steffon bellowed, arms opened wide. “My Queen! Cousin! Your beautifulness! Give me a hug! And a kiss or two while you’re at it! You must!”

Queen Rhaella Targaryen blinked rapidly at the sudden storm that overtook her confinement, but stood gracefully in an ethereal whorl of platinum hair and red satin. She welcomed him into her arms, kissing him daintily on both cheeks. Well, once he lifted her high enough anyway. She laughed almost gaily. Good. That pretty face was made for smiling.

Then he turned to behold the fifteen year old harper who’d stopped strumming to watch them. The tall and beautiful Silver Prince with deep purple eyes and long elegant fingers. A memory emerged unbidden at the sight of him. Him and he sheer ridiculousness of the lofty burden of sublime tragedy Steffon could read _far_ too easily in the boy’s face. Of the earliest words that Steffon could remember from his mother, Rhaelle Targaryen of House Baratheon.

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Such a shame he never obeyed her. He _never_ said no to a good spot of wrestling.

“Prince Rhaegar Targaryen,” Steffon ground out, walking to loom over the young man. “Your father tells me you’re a dandy with your nose in old books and head in the clouds. Seeing as he confessed in the same breath to being a right cunt, I’ll defer judgment.” The aghast look on that far too pretty mug was _delightful_. “All the same though, we’ll be living together from now on. Better brace yourself, my prince, because when it comes to my boys and their potential friends, I have _very_ exacting standards.” Steffon smiled wolfishly. “Whether or not you end up calling me father by the time we’re done, you’ll damn well be treating me like one.”

Fuck the Maesters and their snobbish horsecrap. Screw the Seven and their child-buggering death cult. The Others take every last shit parent in the world. He’d do right by these dimwits and teach them how to live even if no one else will, if only to spite them all!


	27. Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (Brandon)

## BRANDON

“-. 274 AC .-“

“The Pentoshi did what?”

As he listened to his assistant’s report a second time, Brandon Stark wondered what in all the hells kind of bugworm had squirmed its way up the cheesemonger’s arse and whatever passed for a cunt on his perfumed cockless paramour. Even without his hard-won ability to read the patterns, the signs he could see in this sudden eruption of tensions _ostensibly_ between Braavos and Pentos – the _deliberate_ warning signs – were plain to see for anyone familiar with either of those swindlers. Which was increasingly many people these days, now that the pair were secure enough in their wealth, contacts and blackmail to openly peddle their ‘repossessed’ wares and otherwise cultivate their reputation as people of wealth and taste. Wealth especially. Still, even knowing how blatant the two had grown in casting their net throughout the Free Cities, this was beyond the pale. A sudden string of thefts, mutinies or pirate attacks on ships known to sail under any business openly affiliated with the Company. Inexplicable reticence or outright mistrust by their latest prospective trade partners. Rental depos and granaries burned, looted or littered with dead _little mice_. Swaths of their underworld contacts dead in canals or alleys, all ‘found’ with precious gems on them. Some so precious that even the most desperate street urchin knew better than to expect anything besides a knife to the kidney over.

He grimly accepted and opened the bag of collected ‘recompense.’ Amethyst, tourmaline, emerald, green pearl, jade, jet, onyx, opal, ruby, sapphire and slit yellow tiger's eye, they were all there. Even a black diamond. It sat there on top of the rest, taunting him with its promise of ill will and unfinished business.

“Thank you, Byam.” Brandon was glad for the age and experience that let him keep the ice inside him from cracking where others could see. All seventy-four years of it. “Take the rest of the day off. Go to your lady.”

“She’s no lady, my dame,” the young man grinned. “She’s a goddess, she is.”

“I appreciate the attempt at levity, my boy.” The young man ducked his head bashfully at his failure to lift his spirits. Seeing him act so contrite, one could almost forget he was a knight, sellsail and Captain-adventurer that regularly braved all the five seas. “Tell your goddess what you just told me and let her know I’ll be by later to talk.”

Byam Flint, formerly of Widow’s Watch, nodded and left, ordering the gates locked and barred behind him.

Brandon Stark waited for the knight to leave, then left his office for his private chambers on the second floor of the manse. Blue Petal Manor was a lofty edifice that his enterprising predecessors had bought piecemeal, and then built up into the closest thing to a bridge castle that could be found in Braavos. It was rooted in fully-appointed, walled houses on both banks of the Green Canal and had two stories. Its size served to give his private balcony a broad, sweeping view of the Secret City. One could see half-way to the lagoon to the west on a clear day, insofar as Braavos even had clear days. As far as the Palace of Truth as well, to the east, where voting took place. He had no interest in any of that today, however. He closed the doors to his balcony, pulled down all the blinds and went to lie back on his bed. He needed peace, quiet and time away from his aching joints. Time enough for the ice cap containing his black, roiling rage to firm back up, never mind everything else on his mind that he didn’t have it in him to worry about lest his heart give away right there. He was not a young man anymore, to roar and rage, let alone go out digging worms out of their pits and splitting guts open from dust to dawn and dusk again on the battlefield. He had duties. Responsibilities. New orders from his King that had only just reached him a scant month prior. Orders that had sent _him_ sending orders of his own as well, practically emptying Blue Petal Manor of the many farmers, traders, sailors, sellswords and everyone else who could be spared to help realign their various interests. He’d been so shocked at the time. So thrilled. So hopeful. He’d felt so alive after so very long not stepping foot on the earth of his homeland. Now he wondered if the orders had come too late, or if his own actions since then were what caused… whatever this was.

For a moment, he let himself succumb to the weight of the thankless task he’d borne for so many decades. Then he took a deep breath and collected himself.

He was Brandon of House Stark, son of Artos the Implacable, nephew of Rodrik the Wandering Wolf, Prince in Exile of the Kingdom of Winter. And he would see this handled. He _would_ see this handled. He would see this handled carefully. Calmly. So calmly that he’d not keel over from a sudden fit of apoplexy the next time someone came charging in, screaming that his last remaining goodson or nephews or grandson or all of them had decided to follow his brother and daughters and sons into d-

“Uncle?” Came the strong voice of Osrick on the heels of the front doors smashing open. “Uncle! Are you home? Byam said you were!”

For the umpteenth time, Brandon Stark thanked his ancestors for the thick stone blocks and high walls. He was not as thankful for the promptness of the servants that oh so efficiently directed his nephew to find him.

“Uncle, Byam said you were-ah, there you are! I bring news!” He’s not dead, he’s not dead, he’s not dead- “That news being, of course, that your grandson continues to be a complete moron.”

“He’s still not dead then?”

“Apparently not. Though not for lack of trying. Do we have any secret magic stores that could turn back time to before my girl popped out her little Dabron? Because I’m seriously reconsidering this whole grandchildren business!”

“Where is he? Which courtesan’s honor was he protecting this time? And how ready is he for my latest, all too futile lecture on the merits of not being a brash imbecile ready to cross blades with every bravo this side of Lys?”

“Madam Rosmerta of the Three Broomsticks, Lady Flint is tending to him now, and not hardly.”

“Wonderful.” He wasn’t dead. Not dead. Not dead like the others, thank whatever god had seen to it, even if they never seemed to be doing anything else!

“I heard you were headed to the Flints anyway?”

“Where and how did you hear?”

“Never fear, uncle, you needn’t ‘reconsider Byam’s usefulness’ or any such rot, we were both behind his wife’s closed doors.”

Times like this made him want to share the true mission with more people. But then he reminded himself that the secrecy of home and kin was the only thing that had consistently served them well, all of them, as opposed to the morass of treachery, hardship and worthless ‘compromise’ that came with every other risk they’d ever taken. It meant they had to establish their own, internal channels of management and leadership once their families and enterprises expanded enough beyond a mere sellsword company. But it also protected them from the attentions of the fleeting powers of this land, and the factionalism so prevalent in the Free Cities and elsewhere. Especially when combined with constant flow of new blood from home in the form of third sons and daughters and other scions noble and small alike, come down from the North to seek their fortune. There were other reasons why they’d never openly declared their goals and nature as well, reasons that the Blackfyres had proven justified repeatedly. Ultimately, Essos was rich in many kinds of coin, but honor wasn’t among them.

Neither was good sense, he despaired internally when he walked in on his grandson later. In fact, Essos was so lacking in sense that it had become its own leech! “You stupid boy! Look at you! Split open from hip to neck! I told you this would happen one day! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Next time _he’ll_ be drinking from the Moon Pool, mark my words.”

Brandon Stark felt a sharp throb in his neck. “There won’t be a next time, you stupid boy!”

Rodrik Stark looked up from his bandages, aghast. “Grandfather! You can’t lose your wits now! Don’t you realise what such a snub would do to the cause?” On second thought, maybe he’d shared the true mission with too _many_ people. “You’re telling me to turn down a challenge by the First Sword of Braavos!”

“Oh, that was _not_ the First Sword of Braavos!”

“He damn well will be.”

“I’m sure,” sneered Brandon Stark at what had to be the dumbest spawn’s spawn that House Stark had ever been cursed with since the cravenly brood of Torrhen the Kneeler, on both sides of the sea! “Just like the one before. And the one before him. And the ten before that!”

“Ah, but _they_ didn’t beat me!”

Brandon smacked him. And when the impudent rascal only grinned wider, he threw his hands in the air and left him in Osrick’s hands while he went to speak with Dame Flint for his own peace of mind. He never imagined he would be discussing the greatest threat to the Cause while considering it a _boon_ to his peace of mind, but there it was.

The Dame Bessara Flint nee Reyaan took one look at him and immediately started fussing over him, seating him in her husband’s chair at the head of the table, bringing a basin of hot water to soak his aching feet, and insisting he have a warm meal when he admitted to not having broken his fast even once that day. Brandon ruefully accepted her care and gratefully partook of the shrimp and persimonn soup. He gladly accepted the sardines also, fried crisp in pepper oil and served so hot they burned his fingers. He mopped up the leftover oil with a chunk of bread torn off the end of Bessara’s evening loaf of olive bread and washed it all down with a cup of watered wine, savoring the tastes and the smells, the rough feel of the crust beneath his fingers, the slickness of the oil as he pinched it out of his beard, the sting of the hot pepper when it got into his cracked wisdom teeth. Hear, smell, taste, feel, pain he reminded himself. There were many ways to know you still lived, even for those like him who had outlived so very many he shouldn’t have.

When pleasure was done, they got down to business. For all his skill in patterns, it didn’t compare to skill _and_ talent, and Lady Bessara had him beat in both. Though a third daughter of a fourth son, she was a testament to the worth of the bloodline and education of Keyholder families. She was also the one with consistent access to news from all their enterprises, having coordinated multiple different businesses and ships since even before she effectively took over as chief overseer of trading interests from Alyssa Karstark, Brandon’s own daughter four years dead. Aside from Bessara’s own husband Byam, who brought the news to begin with (or often became the news on his voyages, which sadly cut him off from current events for weeks and even months at a time), the Dame herself was the one likely to provide the best perspective on things.

Bessara sat next to him and worked with him to lay out the maps of the Narrow Sea, Braavos, Pentos and the Disputed Lands on the round table. Not for the first time, Brandon Stark wished someone came up with a better map instead of these hand-drawn sketches. “I’ve heard back well enough from the folk back west,” she told him. “We’re still waiting on Karhold, but Widow’s Watch and Ramsgate have already responded. They’re not enthused to be passed over for the bigger fish, but they understand public spectacle as well as the next man. Envoys have been sent to White Harbor. Lord Weyrman Manderly will hopefully read the signs and not obstruct our efforts to secure the needed storage space and berthing.”

Hopefully, she says. Well, since the scope of the Rose had deliberately been kept from most people on both sides of the sea outside the heads and heirs of the great houses, that couldn’t be helped. Torrhen’s unfaithful children be damned, but they sure had taught them all a lesson in keeping secrets. He supposed it was time to see if the lesson had been a good one or just another kind of failure from overreacting in the other direction.

Unfortunately, much like he’d feared, the best perspective was also the grimmest. Replies had yet to come from half their holdings in Andalos (hah!), and none yet from further south. They didn’t know if the new orders had reached the Company of the Rose before they deployed under their latest contract either. Which was of particular worry because said contract was against roving Dothraki in the Flatlands near Pentos, not the Disputed Lands further south. Brandon could see why his goodson and nephew had signed on it. It was not only sponsored by three Keyholders of Braavos, but also deployed them ahead of the Rose’s own (not openly affiliated) holdings near the Braavos-Pentoshi border. Braavos had secured its demesne close to home, but its need for sellsword contracts hadn’t actually dropped since the Braavos-Pentos war. If Braavos had only forced Pentos to abolish slavery and withdraw from the slave trade after their victory in in 209 AC, things either would have been different or another war would have occurred after the recovery period. But Braavos had also limited the Pentoshi military forces and prevented the city from hiring sellswords. Unfortunately, this crippled Pentos’ ability to secure its territory and act as an effective buffer state. Which made it an open sieve for any Dothraki Khal who got the idea to detour through their lands and raid Braavos from the south, instead of roving across both Norvos _and_ Braavos’ own border to the South-Southeast. This meant that any armed incursion into Pentoshi lands were unofficially Braavos’ problem too. A problem made worse every time they deployed their latest sellsword hires. The Pentoshi magisters always started braying about Braavos aiming to finally attempt the full armed occupation they surely must have been planning all this time.

It was an open secret that Pentos used its connections in other Free Cities as proxies to hire sellswords on their behalf. But the lack of mutual loyalty between any of the Free Cities made this a risky gamble, and not owning the contract of professional soldiers whose loyalty was already in doubt was never going to be a good idea.

And now it all seemed to have become the Rose’s problem too, Brandon thought testily. Perhaps Pentos was airing its grievance with Braavos. Perhaps the semi-cockless duo had inflamed tensions or otherwise taken advantage of things to strike at them somehow. For whatever reason Brandon couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was all just bad luck. Or perhaps nothing out of the ordinary had happened and it was just freak weather or a fallen horseshoe that had stalled the word back. For everyone. At the same time. Yes.

As the day wore down, it became clear that unknown elements were moving against even the holdings they had painstakingly rented, leased and even bought outright in some cases all the way up north, at great expense and deniability through some of their naturalised kinsmen. Even those in the Braavosi Marshes and the coast facing Lorath along the Shivering Sea. They were widely considered the most dubious long-term investments Braavos had ever seen, but were in reality their most precious agricultural projects. Sugar beets from Lhazar, black pepper from Sothoryos, red and green hot peppers from the Orange Shore, bell peppers from the Summer Islands, even sugarcane from Mantarys. Crops they had painstakingly cultivated and bred for years, even decades, in and out of glass gardens, in the hopes they would eventually turn out strains capable of surviving and even thriving in the North. A day that the farmers swore waited only for his word based on the turnout of last autumn’s final harvests. And yet, now, probing raids ostensibly by Norvosi pirates and ‘Skagosi’ seemed to have started all over the coast as well. How convenient that Braavos was caught looking southward and there were no direct interests by native Braavosi worthies in those small, out of the way regions.

And then there was the rice. The rice they had laboured to breed some semblance of winter endurance into for literal _hundreds_ of years. The rice they had been partnered on with one of the dynastic YiTish merchant guilds since the very beginning. They would give half of all new harvests and new strains in exchange for funding half the enterprise, training in their cultivation, coordinating records of their parallel progress, and replenishing seed supplies from their share of the crops at cost in case of disaster. Which had proven a boon on several occasions when frostbite or plague swept their paddies wholesale. The YiTish had dreams of expanding northward into the lands of the Jogos Nhai, and this would give them a ready strain of their most fundamental crop to sustain any new adminsitration zones. Or that was the reason they agreed to share the techniques of YiTish rice farming in the beginning. Who knew why they still kept their part of the deal after everyone originally involved was dead and gone?

Unfortunately, there was a double catch to the enterprise. One, the duty to defend the crops fell entirely on them. That was already one clause in jeopardy, if the scoundrels currently moving against them within the city decided to expand into the swamps on the mainland. And two, the enterprise was too big to downplay and had to be run through the Iron Bank from the very beginning. Which meant collateral.

 _Significant_ collateral.

Never mind all the threshing, husking and polishing!

Brandon Stark looked upon the increasingly dotted map with dismay. At this rate, the only enterprise that _wasn’t_ suddenly in some danger were those earth apples that some scoundrels swore had come from Sothoryos. Alas, Brandon wasn’t far enough gone to buy into stories of randomly-occurring wonder crops, no matter how well the first harvests had gone. He’d spare his hopes for the soybeans instead. And even then only because the fields were on lease from House Reyaan and the masters of these oh so mysterious ‘raiders’ would be mad to tangle with the Iron Bank over _a farm_ of all things, even just by proxy through one of the Keyholder Houses.

He was well and truly ready to collapse by the time the lamp oil ran low. He gratefully accepted Dame Bessara’s invitation to stay the night and collapsed on the bed in their guestroom, his grandson next to him and his nephew on the floor between them and the door, sitting against the bedside with sheathed sword in hand.

As he faded, he thought of his lost son. He’d long ago decided he had most likely disappeared because someone had found out and taken exception to him flitting up and down the Arsenal of Braavos through that seagull of his. Never mind he’d never gotten around to putting anything on paper. Sometimes, though, he wondered if it might have been something more sinister that took him. Him and… and the others.

Mercifully, nothing disturbed him that night. 

Then they took a serpent boat back to Blue Petal Manor only to find it locked down tighter than a chastity belt with smoke coming out of his bedroom.

His guards turned out to be as overzealous in denying entry as they were ashamed over the lack of alertness during the night. Which was Brandon’s own fault for stretching their numbers so thin that even his own sentries had to pull double shifts. Little wonder someone sufficiently determined would sneak in. Except that wasn’t what happened. Best as anyone could figure, this wasn’t an assassination attempt or whatever else. It was some no-name out to try and steal the cheesemonger’s weregild.

 _I was to die in a mugging_ , Brandon Stark thought in abject disbelief. _Not some Faceless or Sorrowful Man or some sworn foe. Just some robber._

He felt stunned. Then numb. Then he just felt furious.

“Osrick. Byam. Gather everyone. Go. Now.”

They went.

And when all the trusted gathered in the deepest recesses of Blue Petal Manor, the Prince of Winter in Exile stood before his people. Knights, sailors, bravos, merchants, sellswords, farmers, artists, pit fighters, whores and killers. He stood before them and laid things bare and gave his order.

“We are at war. Be they the most devious of enemies or the deepest depths of stupidity, we are at war. We are at war and it _vexes_ me. Collect our kin. Call in our favors. Purge the spies. Send out the assassins. By the time the Grey Ships come to bear us hence, I want this _finished_.”

Grim nods and swift action was his answer.

“Osrick. You and Rodrik stay.”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Yes, grandfather.”

When next day dawned on the Bastard Daughter, the streets and canals flowed with red blood of decided more mixed ancestry than ever.

For a whole month he locked down Blue Petal Manor to all those not explicitly summoned and devoted himself to the task of nursing his grandson back to health. He was no maester, but he had skill enough for this, as did his servants with how many times his fool blood had gotten into a scrape. Or worse. All the while, the picture gained contours, shades and clarity with every new bit of news and person that answered his call and messages.

 _My sudden change in routine must have spooked them_. He still had no idea what had set the cheesemonger and his bald arse boy against them. Failing all the shady elements from Myr to Lorath suddenly deciding to go after them and their disparate interests by pure coincidence, this reeked of a long-term plan turned arseways. If it were him, he’d have waited until spring when they usually re-invested most of the seeds back into the fields. Between that and the sudden elimination of everyone informed of the Rose’s true scope and purpose, the Kingdom in Exile could have been decapitated with none the wiser. Would have left their centuries of work up for easy takeover too. Who knew how long it would take for new leadership to emerge and gather the branches back together? How many branches would even be left at that point?

Instead, what was happening was the winter equivalent of going on a raiding spree to light up the fields wholesale. Wasteful, but worth it if you’ve already invested so many resources in the preparations. For whatever reason.

Essosi lunatics!

And this was just Pentos. The less said about Norvos, Tyrosh, Qohor and Volantis, the better.

Brandon wondered, briefly, if he was perhaps running the leakiest information net in the world, before dismissing the notion. He didn’t run such a loose house that he’d have missed _all_ the signs of poor spycraft. More likely the half-cocked duo – or their clients or patrons, if any – had uncovered whatever they uncovered about the Kingdom in Exile before his time. Why they’d have sat on the information so long was beyond him, but it was the only thing that made sense.

When he next emerged from Blue Petal Manor, he used the rarely used undercroft access to bypass the Iron Bank and Sealord’s men that had been all but camped on his doorstep for days. Then he walked into the Iron Bank itself blithe as you please, because certain statements had to be made. After all, didn’t the Keyholders and their many clients know better than to openly show ingratitude to being warned of major threats to their livelihoods? But of course they did! Like, say, the fact that Pentos had gone from appeasing the barbarian horsemen to allying with them, going so far as to strike deals with marauding Khals to problem-solve certain ‘Braavosi mercenaries.’ Could he and his be blamed for retaliating against the Pentoshi scum that tried to help them with blades drawn in the dark? Of course not! Why, he wasn’t even obliged to consult with them, but it paid to be courteous. It _paid_ to be courteous, isn’t that part and parcel of the Iron Bank’s reputation?

It was, they agreed, all the way up to the account manager overseeing their rice venture and the representative from Yi-Ti that she’d taken the liberty of summoning in his absence. Brandon, of course, graciously assured the ambitious woman that he was willing to forgive this breach of protocol. After all, it couldn’t be that the Iron Bank meant to take advantage of the chaos to renegotiate standing contracts with only half of the parties present. “Besides, surely you couldn’t have known this could leave our YiTish partner here in the lurch,” he told the ambitious woman and her frozen smile while representative Cheng fumed in the chair next to him. “Not when our rice breeding project has finally borne fruit! Surely not for the sake of some paltry collateral from days gone by!”

The visit to the Sealord’s Palace didn’t quite come at sword point, but ended more or less the way he expected. Brandon was banished along with all those similarly involved in the recent ‘unrest’ after being denied every last, ‘desperate’ appeal. He was to leave within a moonturn and never return on pain of death. That the Sealord’s office _still_ had no idea of the Rose’s true scope even though the Iron Bank did (and surely the Faceless Men as well) said a lot about the power of the current title holder to enforce his banishment. Such a shame that didn’t cover the nine tenths of his people he was in charge of. Such a shame he was taking at least six tenths of those people and leaving anyway with all their wealth. Such a shame that would upend Braavos’ economy for the next year or ten once they started to really liquidate their assets. He wondered how many outstanding contracts and debts the Iron Bank would pounce on in the ensuing chaos. On that note, he went and sold the deed to Blue Petal Manor to a certain naturalised ‘friend’ of the family with no outstanding debts, all for the positively ruinous price of one iron mark.

And if it so happened that he failed to mention the impending, sudden removal of thirty-some vessels from the sea trade? True, doing such a thing without letting anyone know in advance could really spook people, but what could he do? Age makes people forget the oddest things.

Vindication, when it came, was saccharine sweet and thrice as bitter. It turned out that his change in routine probably _hadn’t_ been the reason for the sudden escalation. That could probably be laid at the feet of his wonderful nephew the King, who’d gone and done a visit down south that quite thoroughly broke the kingdom of those Andal lunatics, and their disgusting seven-fold pretense at godliness that had no problem making exemptions from their holy word for sister-fucking abominations.

Imagine a people so disgusting, they need to make laws to make it illegal to hate them.

But now…

Bloodied maesters scattered to the five winds, humbled Andals, _child-buggering shitstain septons being killed in the streets by their own useless sheep_. Each piece of news threatened to split his face.

Or would have, if not for the news on their own side of the Narrow Sea. Khals marauding all over their southernmost holdings, pillaging two thirds of their summer crops. A last ditch attempt by the ‘Skagosi’ that set a scattering of their seed granaries on fire. The Windblown fighting the Company of the Cat – again – in an area that just so happened to spill over into their stores of earth apples. Fortunately, his orders seemed to have been acted on quick enough that they’d managed to spirit away sufficient supply of all their crops to start over elsewhere.

And then there was the Company of the Rose. Their very own sellsword company, with twenty-five hundred foot and one thousand horse, altogether thirty-five hundred strong. He hoped his orders reached them before any disaster struck. And that the people on the ground interpreted his orders as ‘save what you can if you’re in the area’. Even if he technically hadn’t originally intended for the crops to be moved before winter’s end. He supposed they’d find out their ability to thrive in the North by how many of them succumbed to humidity and frostbite on the way to the mainland.

His mercurial mood lifted only when he saw the triumphant sight of their armada when passing under the Titan’s shadow.

He didn’t expect the Wolf Pack. Which, it turned out, was a common thing. The Dothraki never seemed to expect them either, or any infantry that didn’t break at the first bellowing charge of those half-naked barbarians that never saw a lance. Which, it turned out, had been the biggest blessing of them all, even if it didn’t really carry the day in the end.

Brandon Stark welcomed the disembarking Wolf Pack as heroes, but on the inside he felt as if he could drop dead and damn whatever else.

The Company of the Rose. It had been caught in a double ambush by the Bright Banners and Second Sons, who’d lured them in by ‘supplying’ themselves from the Rose’s variously owned stores across Andalos. Even now that accursed place taunted the men of the North. His orders had reached them just in time to turn them back in the nick of time. But though able to retreat in good order, losing just a handful of men, it wasn’t without wandering into a surprise raid by some now dead Khal. The chaotic, orderless, four-way disaster that followed cost them twice again those numbers and eliminated almost all of the Company’s senior leadership, and might have seen tem defeated in detail if not for the unexpected rear guard action by the Wolf Pack themselves. Tarl Ryswell. Wallace and Waller Dustin. Alan Liddle. Norton Norrey. Jon, Rod and Brandon Wull, named after him.

He was Brandon Stark, son of Artos Stark and Lysara Karstark. Father of three sons, two of whom had long since died as sellswords in the disputed lands, the third having failed to disembark after a voyage to Lys that same summer. Twin of Benjen, who’d gone looking for his vanished boy and vanished as well, his half dozen compatriots lost or found addled or not at all. And now, the list grew still. His nephew Odrick, Osrick’s twin brother. His goodson Karl Karstark, may he find again the embrace of his wife, Brandon’s own daughter. Dolman Glover, whom he’d been in talks with for a betrothal for his grandson. Gone, now, all of them like the rest. Along with everyone else in the company who knew their real purpose.

He looked inside and he felt dead.

And then he felt _livid._

To whatever hell existed with the entirety of Essos and all the vermin crawling around this dead carcass of a bygone age! At this rate those two blackguards were going to cripple the cause by sheer accident!

The rage exhausted itself like most of himself did these days.

Brandon Stark beheld the leader of the Wolf Pack sellsword company. Malyn Hornwood. Descended from Hallis Hornwood, the man who’d originally established the Wolf Pack in the aftermath of the Dance of the Dragons alongside Timothy Snow. The man was of middling height, stout strength and positively ludicrous endurance on account of the way he trained his men, as he was all too boisterously regaling him without being asked.

“It never does to be too free with your approval!” The man laughingly boasted once his men had disembarked. Surprisingly quickly too. Efficiently. The full thousand of them, men of Northern blood one and all. “No man is a true member of the Pack if he can’t handle two battles, three full days and nights of forced marches, crossing a stream once by wading and once by building a brigade, building and taking down a small fort and pitching and breaking camp no less than a dozen times, all while carrying and caring for their equipment and making sure no man is left behind.” The man smiled, slapping the chest of what was probably his second in command, man clad in lamellar armor armed with a shield and halberd. “Once your lot is back on its proper feet, might be I can get them worthy of being called proper soldiers. Provided we can still keep abreast of each other of course.” The man turned serious and leaned close. Close enough to whisper. Close enough to kill. “Tell the King we’d like to come home too.”

Brandon Stark reared back and stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.

The man pulled back as well and gestured to the strange, one-wheeled contraption being repaired nearby. “You can keep the wheelbarrows. Should be some two hundred or thereabouts. Good YiTish engineering, did you know? A baggage train with these lovelies can _almost_ match our pace. Probably leave you and yours in the dust though. Oh well, more motivation!”

Malyn Hornwood winked and led his men away.

“I don’t think I like that man,” Rodrik muttered.

“’Course you don’t,” Osrick grunted. “He’s a man’s man. You’re a dandy with shit endurance.”

“Fuck you, nuncle.”

“Not for all the clap in the world.”

Well.

Well!

Brandon Stark turned towards the gangplank.

“Won’t my Lord Stark be needing a cabin boy on the way?” asked the biggest, fattest dockhand he’d ever seen. “The sea won’t be leading where you thought it might.”

Brandon stopped and turned to inspect the speaker with a sudden feeling of trepidation, only for his heart to skip a beat as the man turned a silver coin over his fingers, cast in the shape of a green hand.

“… Mayhaps I might.”

Thirty-one grey ships sailed into the west. Four merchanters, six carracks, five cogs and fifteen galleys, led forth by the newly restyled Snowdrift, a double-decked dromond with three masts, two hundred oarsmen, and seventy men ready for war.

“Wonders be afoot, my lord,” said his new guest, throwing off his hood to reveal blond hair so pale it ate the snowflakes falling on it. His beard was just bushy enough to hide his second chin. “Waiting for the next one is like being teased by an unpaid whore, but damned if they don’t make you look forward to more.” There was a small, round box in the man’s hand, made of bone. He played almost obsessively with the lid, clack-clack-clack showing glimpses of a two-ended needle. “But I can see sailing’s not your passion.”

So much for hiding the sad state of his sea legs. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“No matter.” The man’s other hand came from beneath his cloak, briefly revealing green stitching shaped like a lamprey’s maw. It held a booklet of some kind. “Perhaps a spot of good reading? I hear it’s all the rage up in Winterfell these days. This here in particular seems to have caught right quick with you Braavosi.”

“’Them’ Braavosi, not ‘you.’” Brandon took it and traced its surface. It was made out of exquisitely high-quality paper covered in the neatest letters he’d ever seen, if somewhat faded. There was a drawing on the front of something that looked like the ugly cousin of cauliflower. Above it were words. _Science is a clear understanding of truth, the enlightenment of reason_. Below, more words. The title. It read:

**_On the Killing of Plagues_ **

_A Treatise on Unseen Morphons and the Use of Mold Extract as Infection Treatment: A Double-Blind, Randomised, Sugar Pill-Controlled Trial_

By Lord Brandon Stark of Winterfell, Maester Qyburn, Maester Luwin and Archmaester Marwyn, with assistance by Acolytes Colemon, Rhodry and Tybald Snow.

Journal of Scientific Inquiry, Volume 1, Issue 1, published on 05.02.274 by the Crown of Winter Institute of Learning.

Brandon Stark felt a strange feeling that he decided not to look at too closely lest it be smothered along with everything else. He wouldn’t last much longer, he knew. He’d be lucky if he saw Winterfell. But as he stood atop the deck of the Northern Fleet’s flagship, bearing forth the bounty of work done over centuries and years, he decided that he didn’t really care what the half-cocked wonder duo was thinking after all. A lesser son of a lesser house under a lesser Cause might have lost all sense and dropped everything in order to swear vengeance against those two, but he had more important things to do. He’d left behind competent men and women to oversee the transition. He no longer needed constant watch by his blood to defend from murders. And he was looking forward to no longer having to fight on behalf of slavers, no matter how clean and shiny their coin.

The Essosi cunts could have their shit continent. He was going home.


End file.
